


The Pious Ones

by starstuddedsin



Series: Monrovia [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, Boypussy, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infertility, M/M, Mentions of Abortion, Mentions of miscarriage, Misgendering, Oral Sex, Prostitution, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Esteem Issues, Transphobia, Vaginal Sex, but you don't have to read those stories to get this, deadnaming, this story is vaguely linked to the others in the series
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25027114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstuddedsin/pseuds/starstuddedsin
Summary: Omar Barakat is a failed physician and a drunkard, who will treat even beggars and whores for cheap.To Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches, an elf who can only pay for his best friend's medical treatment by offering up his own cunt, this is very good news.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Monrovia [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783531
Comments: 222
Kudos: 239





	1. The Apprentice Physician

Omar, an apprentice doctor, was not supposed to work for cheap. 

There were rules about that sort of thing in Praknita. In Praknita, doctors were of a caste permitted to touch even princes. To sully their fortunate hands touching those who could not pay would have insulted those princes. 

“You are from Hakash, young Omar Barakat,” the master physician had said. “You might not understand the ways of Praknita. But in Praknita just a whiff of the uncleanliness of the lower castes can sink a man’s whole practice. And this is no ordinary practice. We hold the patronage of Prince Ladolat himself.”

Ladolat, prince of parks. Of parties. Ladolat who let the upper castes run the city and brutally tax the lower castes, who burdened the people with his expensive permits and his even more expensive licenses. Who had bankrupted the schools, the city libraries, and the Praknita postal service. And whose laughing charm meant no one ever called him on it.

Omar was not supposed to concern himself with any of that, even if it galled him. As a foreigner, it was not his place to criticize Praknita. It was only his place to save up for his license, and in the meantime do as his teacher, the master physician, told him. He was to ignore ignorant laborers, spurn servants, turn away stall-tenders and street peddlers. He was to hold out his services only to those who could pay in jewels and gold -- with a generous cut, of course, to go to the master physician. 

This approach to the selling of medicine was foolproof. It had made the master physician a rich man. 

Omar rebelled. He bandaged beggars in secret, delivered the children of whores. He did this until the master physician found out, and then he was turned out without his mastery. 

Forever to be a failed physician. 

He got woefully drunk the night he was turned out. He wrote a letter to his brother Nasir, and posted the letter. This was despite the fact that Nasir had been dead some five years, and also despite the fact that the Praknita postal service was famously so slow and broken that nothing ever got delivered, anyway.

Omar didn't care. He was drunk. And now he had nothing to show for five years of medical tutelage. He could not even go back to Hakash — the dishonor would be too great. 

So he was forced to eke out a living in the ragged district just within Praknita's northernmost wall, where the people could barely pay. They paid in soiled and rotten food they had scrounged as best they could, in bolts of coarse fabric they treasured as if it were silk. In prayers to gods Omar didn’t believe in. 

In liquor, which, after a few months in the ragged district, Omar came to view as perhaps the best payment of all.

Perhaps.

Omar, it must be said, was not exactly a scoundrel. But after a few months in the ragged district, now considered unclean for having touched the unclean, it was hard to say if he was a good man. He was not that. He had never been that. He’d tended the beggars only in exchange for their meager coin — for the master physician took Omar's gold, and did not pay his apprentices in anything but tutelage — and the whores in exchange for their practiced caresses. He had worked for cheap, not for free. 

He never worked for free. And this was known in the ragged district. And so when two of Prince Ladolat’s elf servants knocked on his stooped alley-side door, and one offered its tight green cunt in exchange for treatment, Omar really did not have to think twice before drunkenly agreeing. 

-

A brief discourse on elves. 

Elves are beings of light, or most of them are. This is good. Darkness is what the world came from, and darkness is what will swallow it up someday. So was said in Hakash, when Omar was young. But it was also said in Hakash that elves and men -- they can sometimes be beings of light.

Haroun the Great, the last prophet of Hakash, once categorized all the creatures of the world, and thus every single one of Hakash’s learned sons, including Omar, knew that there were four central categories of elves. 

The green-tipped elves of the trees, sometimes called elves of sunlight, or of the air, for how they bounded through the branches of their bright native jungles. 

The blue-tipped elves of the seas, sometimes called the elves of moonlight, or the elves of claws and teeth, for how they behaved like sharks when provoked.

The red-tipped elves of the hells, which were the elves of fire and the only elves of utterly irredeemable darkness, and thus demons to be avoided. 

The light-tipped elves of the stars, of which only one was ever known to have descended to the earth. Haroun had trapped it at the foot of a rainbow in order to question it and learn from it. It had confirmed for Haroun that it was better called an elf of the heavens, and thus that it was an angel and an ambassador of the God of men. 

It was unknown in Haroun's time -- or indeed in Omar's time -- if the elves of hell or heaven could be carnal things. In Hakash at any time, to think this way about any creature of hell or heaven was greatly discouraged. 

But one could of course fuck an elf of the trees or of the waters. Haroun hadn’t precisely said so. But his learned notes had included sketches of the elves, and, well. 

In Hakash, the general civic piety of that city discouraged any young student from mentioning his reaction to those trim elf bodies. To those long limbs, determined little cocks, and oddly firm jaws. To those hairless womanly slits, parting mounds as plump and flushed as almond fruit. Omar, when young and promising and first in his class, had passed many a night in his dormitory quietly stroking himself off to the thought of the stiff little cocklets and the pretty mounds, only to rise and pray and hope to be cleansed of such a disgraceful desire. 

In Praknita, though, a cunt was a cunt, even to a once-pious son of Hakash. 

This cunt was, as already mentioned, a dun green. This was a jungle elf, a sunlight elf. He was a slender, brown-skinned little thing, and he obediently stripped off his loose tan trousers right there in the alleyway. He spread the green-tinted lips with his green-tipped fingers so that Omar could see what he was offering. 

“Very tight,” he assured Omar. “Good — Hil’ki is _good_ fuck. Promise. Now please. Help Amayi, and Hil’ki’s cunt yours all night.”

Omar’s head was beginning to hurt. This meant that the honey-wine he’d been drinking was starting to lose its effect, and thus that he ought to drink more. But to drink more would make it difficult to fuck Hil’ki the elf or treat Amayi the elf. Omar massaged his temples, annoyed at this reality. 

Amayi clearly needed treatment. A beautiful elf with enormous eyes and a fall of thick golden hair, he was breathing hard, trying not to cry despite the blood staining the bottom half of his thin, loose gown. It was not hard to see why he might cry. Anyone with a belly that gravid wouldn’t want to be bleeding down his thighs. Even an apprentice doctor could tell that that was not good news. Omar calculated the odds of saving anything in Amayi’s belly and had to conclude that they were not good. 

If only his head could stop spinning. He would be more use then. But he’d been drinking all morning and was slow and sluggish, only just coming back to anything like ugly sobriety, right here in the alley beneath the pounding Praknita sun. 

“ _Please_ ,” Hil’ki begged again now. “Is losing clutch!”

He wasn’t so beautiful as Amayi. He was rather ordinary-looking for his kind, with a stubborn little chin and the curious pointed ears that marked him out as an elf even more than the green-tipped fingers or golden hair. But now he shrugged out of his vest, evidently willing to stand quite naked in the alleyway to help his friend.

He cupped his puffy little elfin tits. 

“These too,” he offered. “All of Hil’ki. You want back hole? Yes. Have too. Please—“

Omar would have laughed if his head hadn’t been starting to throb. He would have done it for just the cunt. He worked for cheap, after all. But this reminded him that time was of the essence, so good. Good to have that reminder. He stepped aside to let the elves pass. 

“Table,” he mumbled to Amayi, pointing that lovely, crying little thing to the curtained alcove that served as examination room. 

Hil’ki he waved to the bed in the other corner. The naked elf grabbed his clothes and helped Amayi inside as Omar turned to his narrow kitchen space to wash his hands with some of the last of his water supplies. If he wasn’t so drunk tomorrow, he’d make a trip to the local well. For now, just this last bucket would have to do. 

He dragged it over to where Amayi was now sitting on the examination table, legs already spread. 

Omar pulled up the little elf’s servant gown without preamble. Amayi’s cunt might have been as pretty as Hil’ki’s, except that it was — 

It was too green. It was a violently bright green, engorged with green elf blood. And it gaped a bit, which it should not have. White and red dribbled out of it.

Haroun had described these green-tipped jungle elves as distinct from the red-tipped hell elves, which were innately creatures of temptation. Jungle elves were supposed to be chaste. They had been drawn that way too, somehow sexless and sweet-looking, despite their proud, tiny cocks and green-flushed cunts. 

Dull green, a sort of olive. Like Hil'ki's cunt. That was the right color. Not this vivid emerald.

Doctor Azu Nenge, a great Ordanian man of medicine whose work Omar had once had the privilege of studying, back when he’d had access to the Master Physician’s books, had been clear about this. Bright green coloring was a very bad sign. It looked beautiful to human eyes, but it was not beautiful. It was horrific. Intense, cruel bruising. 

Omar blinked now, trying to understand why such a young thing as Amayi should be so coarsely abused as a ragged district whore. 

His fingers played with the edge of the elf’s servant gown. Livery, really. Golden livery, designed for easy access. Embroidered with the stamp of Prince Ladolat’s palace, where pleasures were said to reach a perfect peak. 

Hil’ki was holding the crying elf now, humming softly to him. Right. The humming calmed them. Dr. Nenge had said that, even if Haroun had never noted it. 

Omar hummed quietly too. Put the edge of the gown down and gently stroked the trembling thighs. His fingers slid into Amayi almost too easily. Whatever had fucked the elf had left him disturbingly loose. Omar felt carefully around the hot tunnel, hoping it was only a tear in the vaginal wall. 

“You’re a bed servant?” he managed, when he could find a way to speak without mumbling. 

Amayi nodded, but screwed his eyes shut as if he were ashamed. 

“Amayi is good D’lani,” Hil’ki insisted, drawing the other elf in closer to his embrace and stroking Amayi’s thick, shining hair. “Good Amayi! Work to help his _tuo_. Pay for bed servant is good—“

Omar shook his head stubbornly. 

“He shouldn’t be working as a bed servant in this condition,” he said. He gently pulled his fingers out. No tearing there. It came from deeper in, which was bad. 

He would need to get his medical bag, which had a speculum and other tools to help see in deeper. But from the amount of blood still seeping out, and the pained little gasps Amayi was giving as he clutched his belly, Omar thought this wouldn’t be torn vaginal walls at all. 

The clutch — that was how all elves save perhaps the heavenly ones had their young, in groups of two or more — the clutch was what was bleeding. 

That was such an ugly, pounding conclusion that it left Omar entirely sober. 

-

Afterwards, he had to dispose of the little bloody clump by wrapping it in a cloth sack and taking it to the river. 

There, among the low-caste wives laundering their rags, he weighed the sack down with stones and threw it in. 

Then he rinsed out his hands and shuffled back to his alley-side rooms. Something in him avoided meeting the gaze of anyone on the street, not the peddler who relied on him for pox treatment, not the beggar-mother who had once traded him a sack of lentils to heal her daughter, and who still smiled at him no matter how drunk he was. 

He didn't know why he didn't wish to at least smile back at her.

No. He did know. 

Amayi had two little elflings growing in him still. Only one member of the clutch had been lost. The rest were fine. But now -- now it was as if Omar had taken on the shame of the sobbing, heart-broken, abused mother. 

Despite Amayi’s condition, Omar half-expected both elves to be gone by the time he returned to his practice. But Amayi was now lying fast asleep in Omar’s bed, in Omar’s ragged blankets, which made Omar blink. 

The elf Hil’ki, meanwhile, was using the last of the clean water in the bucket to scrub down the examination space. 

“Need water,” he informed Omar, in his thick elfin accent. “Will ask _kelli_ , brother of blood, name of Yorrat, to help. Yorrat very strong. Bring doctor water every day. If doctor help D’lani.”

This last part was said almost archly. Hil’ki, still entirely naked, finished scrubbing everything and dunked the dirty rag in the water. Then he turned and looked expectantly at Omar. 

“Want pay?” he said. He pulled himself up on the table and spread his skinny brown legs. His fingers played into his olive-tinted cunt again, the gesture very pleasantly filthy. 

Omar could not be said to be in the mood. But the creature before him was a great deal more eager than some that offered the same. Hil’ki’s level blue gaze had none of the misery or shame even Amayi’s had had. It was simply -- open.

“You’re not afraid to end up like your friend?” Omar said, jerking his chin back at the sleeping Amayi. 

Elves could breed with men. Haroun had considered it a strange thing for a man to pursue, but that did not mean it wasn’t possible. 

Hil’ki, however, just shook his head. 

“Doctor want use back?” he suggested. 

“No,” Omar said, though he did want that as well. But a man -- a proper man -- should not want that. He said, now, “I want your cunt. But if your belly swells and you don't want it, you come to me, you hear? I’ll deal with it if you want.”

Sometimes he had to dispose of clumps in better circumstances, for those that wanted the clumps gone. It was a less unpleasant experience, generally, than the sheer dread of handling Amayi’s case. 

Now he put that out of his mind. He drew the curtain, enclosing himself and Hil’ki in the little examination space. He’d washed his filthy hands in the river, so that was good, and this morning he’d drunkenly wasted his second-to-last bucket on washing his body, so that was better. 

Praknita was a city full of horse's sharp animal odor, women's perfumed soap odor, men’s milky turmeric-cigarette odor. The disgusting sweat-odor of the dirty, yellow-haired Monrovian soldiers that lounged near Ladolat's palaces. Hakash had none of these smells. Every home in Hakash had plumbing, and every son of Hakash kept himself scrupulously clean. Omar always missed that, but he missed it most when he was about to strip himself down. Even if the only people he stripped in front of were whores, desperate low-caste mothers and wives, and, apparently, elves. 

He spared a second to wonder what the elf would see. A tall man, thinner than he ought to be. The sort of wiry, unkempt thin-ness that came of imposing months of austerity on a body better suited to heft. Wide cheekbones, black stubble on his jaw, black hair and eyes, and a big ungainly prick, easily ten times longer and thicker than the little cocklets Hil’ki and Amayi had. 

If this was worrying or repulsive to Hil’ki, the elf didn’t show it. He licked his lips with a little green tongue as if preparing himself, and then took a deep breath. 

“You want suck first?” he said. “Get you wet. Or you have oil? Need wet. Doctor too big. Hil'ki too dry.”

He was starting to remedy that, by playing his slender fingers into his cunt, getting it to glisten for Omar. 

“I don’t have oil,” Omar bit out, annoyed that he didn’t. “But you have the right idea. Lie down."

A suck -- he wouldn't mind a suck. When he'd been a proper apprentice, that was where half his money had gone. Practiced sucks from the beautiful whores of the night garden district, and the rest to pay to send letters home to his mother and siblings in Hakash via expensive Monrovian railway mail, to assure them that he was praying every day, even on the days he wasn't.

He bit off his memories of that, though. He hadn't written to them for months. He couldn't afford railway mail now, and the Praknita post wouldn't be any good. And anyway, all of their family's money had gone to educating him and his brother, Nasir. Not to Faiz's commission, which their younger brother had had to earn himself, nor to dowries for Asma and Dariya. 

So now it was better that they not hear from him. After Nasir, to learn that _Omar_ , too, was a failure--

No.

He shook his head to dislodge the thoughts. It was cool and not too humid in the examination corner, but he still sweated a bit. The elf Hil'ki was now obediently lying on the table with his skinny legs wide open, still rubbing at his little cunt.

Omar climbed on top of him. The table was not precisely comfortable, but it was large and secure -- he'd nailed it to the floor himself in prouder, less drunken times, when he'd thought to prove to the master physician that Omar of Hakash could be a proper doctor even in the ragged district. So Omar fit atop the table. Omar and this fine-boned, curious little being. 

Hil'ki wriggled a bit, when the doctor's heavy weight was on him. But he didn't seem afraid.

"What you want, doctor? Kiss?"

He opened his mouth, green tongue lolling out in the standard whore's kiss -- _put whatever you like in this hole,_ as the denmothers of the night gardens would say. Omar found himself tracing the pretty mouth with a finger.

"Omar," he said. He didn't particularly like being called 'doctor.' He wasn't one. He was a failed apprentice, and thus had no legal right to the title. No right to have more than one practice. No right to charge more than fifty rudins for anything. No right to the various tax benefits accrued by something so high-class as a doctor. Omar was still technically of the doctor caste, but he had fallen so low as to make even caste irrelevant.

"You really think you can take my whole cock in this little mouth?" he asked the elf now, rather than think of any of that.

Hil'ki closed his mouth and seemed to contemplate it.

"Is not so tight as cunt. And cunt will take you," he decided.

He was still rubbing himself. Omar dropped a much larger hand down to cover his hand, to let Hil'ki teach him the motions the elf favored. Deliberate, steady rubs, dipping into those soft folds. Omar's own cock jerked a bit with interest. 

Pinching the little nub just above the flaps made Hil'ki lose some of his composure. The elf gave a sudden shriek, but the wetness down there must have tripled instantly. Omar suddenly wanted to see it better.

"Suck me, and I'll prepare you," he decided.

He must look ridiculous, he thought, as he turned around awkwardly. Arranged himself to bring his own cock level with Hil'ki's mouth, crouching over the elfin boy. Hil'ki's small hands looked obscene when they grabbed the big prick hanging over his face. Omar lowered himself enough to feed the little elf the head of his cock.

The warm, wet mouth made pleasure start to churn in him. Omar breathed out, hard. He wouldn't let himself choke the little thing, so he tried to be still for a moment, to get used to the lapping tongue. The hands that were obediently stroking his shaft.

When he could think despite the pleasure, he took in a breath and brought himself forward on his own elbows. Stretched over the elf boy, face now to that odd, enticing elfin cockstand and the cunt he'd earned by his labors. 

He spared a hand to stroke the little cock. It was at about the state of Omar's own prick, half-erect, but some firm strokes made it stand as it should. Omar's reward for this was Hil'ki making wet, needy sounds around his own cock. Reverberating sounds that had Omar answering in turn, ragged and pleased. 

Then he parted the drooling cunt lips with his finger, so much thicker than Hil'ki's had been. With Omar's mouth on Hil'ki's clit, the elf seemed to produce more of those wonderful needy sucks. And Omar's hands could peel back the folds and coax that slit to get nice and slick. Slick enough to force a finger inside.

Hil'ki was much tighter than Amayi had been. The elf gave a little jerk beneath Omar, his soft brown skin trembling. 

Omar, ashamed, pulled back.

"I--" he stammered.

The elf was too tight. He was too _small_. Haroun's books taught that to hurt a creature like this was a wicked thing indeed, and no decent son of Hakash would have done it. Done this. Been going hard like this.

Abruptly, Hil'ki pulled his perfect mouth off of Omar's cock. 

His tone was firm.

"Is good. Keep going, doctor Omar. Hil'ki _want_ pay you."

Omar breathed out. Calmed himself. Or calmed himself as best he could with his cock so hard. Now Hil'ki was lathing his tongue along the shaft, messy wet coating every inch of Omar. Omar balanced on an elbow and snuck a look back at the elf, and nearly groaned. His large cock was a filthy sight, pressed against such a small, delicate face. Hil'ki looked obscene and wonderful. He attended to that cock with his tongue and hands and a determined look in his blue eyes, stroking his own spit into the shaft to get it as slick as Omar wanted the pretty green cunt to get.

Omar went back to his work. He was freely leaking pre-cum onto Hil'ki's narrow cheeks by the time he got the elf stretched enough and wet enough to take three fingers. Hil'ki's cunt clung to them like a promise, and just the thought of that tightness around Omar's cock made his head spin worse than honey-wine. Rationally, he knew three fingers was nothing to the girth of his prick. Hil'ki still wasn't stretched enough. But he couldn't be wetter, and if Omar didn't get inside him, he'd end up coming on the elf's face instead.

A better fuck, still, than many Omar could name. Omar felt like his prick was being _worshipped_ by Hil'ki's hands and mouth.

"I could come like this," he confessed to the elf. 

This would be enough. Enough payment. Not the payment Omar really wanted -- he wanted this sweet-tasting, soft little cunt; no, no he wanted the rear pucker, but felt odd actually asking for it -- but then, well. 

Omar was known to work for cheap.

Once more, Hil'ki pulled his mouth off and seemed annoyed.

"What you want?" he demanded. "Doctor Omar help Amayi, yes? Doctor Omar want cunt, or mouth?"

"Cunt," Omar admitted.

This made the elf actually wriggle out from under him. Omar made a hollow noise in his throat. His cock, fully hard, was bereft from the lack of touches. But Hil'ki's steady hand was pulling him around by the shoulder to face the now-kneeling elf. Hil'ki casually wiped a smear of pre-cum off his own cheek with a knuckle, uncaring of the dirtiness of this, and looked the doctor in the eye.

"D'lani need Doctor Omar," he said simply. "Yes? We D'lani -- Gurrehknee here. Servants in this country. Great master doctor not help us. Omar -- he fair man. Help anyone for pay, yes? This I hear. Omar want Hil'ki's cunt for pay, good. Hil'ki give cunt anytime. Hil'ki want Omar to help D'lani. Omar agreed?"

He stuck his little hand out, as if he were a Monrovian sailor making a bargain. Omar blinked at this. 

But, after a moment, he took it in his much larger hand and shook it.

Hil'ki sighed, as if he hadn't been truly able to relax before. 

"Good," he said. "Now you fuck Hil'ki. Here--"

He shoved the doctor back with surprising strength and straddled him while Omar blinked again, this time in shock. Then the little elf was lining his cunt up with Omar's cock, sinking _down_ \--

Slow. Agonizingly slow. Hil'ki's walls were soft as silk and so tight around his prick. Omar's groan was too loud, unthinking and delighted.

Green-tipped fingers closed on his mouth.

"Shhh! Omar, shhhh! Amayi sleeping, yes? Be quiet, yes? For Amayi. For Hil'ki."

Omar could only nod dumbly. Anything. Anything to have Hil'ki work his cunt down further. The elf's whole body shook a bit, little thighs straining. Omar massaged those gently, to encourage him. 

Hil'ki's face twisted up a bit, with pain or exertion or both. But he managed to fuck himself up-down. Slow and taut on Omar's cock, getting a little deeper each time. A perfect hole for Omar. His small hands migrated to Omar's shoulders, so he could steady himself as he worked his hips and thighs.

"Omar come inside," he whispered, blinking at Omar, for his eyes were tearing up a bit. "Yes? Men like come inside D'lani. Very warm and tight, yes? D'lani have good cunts."

"Perfect," Omar managed, though he wanted to let out a hoarse moan instead. "Perfect cunt."

Hil'ki nodded.

"Better than gold, yes, Omar? Better than rudins. Hil'ki take many men. All satisfied. Omar too, yes?"

And his little tunnel _clenched_ \--

Omar bit back the truly animal noise he was on the verge of. He was close. So close to coming inside this tight little being and feeling his mind wash free of all thoughts, all insecurities. 

But before that, he snuck a hand to the small cocklet trapped between them. It was simply a thought he had, from a shamed place inside him that suspected he'd leave Hil'ki's clean, olive cunt as messy and jewel-bruised as Amayi's. He -- he did not like that. 

He closed his fingers, tight and firm, around Hil'ki's little cock. He watched the elfin blue eyes go wide with surprise. Omar stroked Hil'ki off in time to Hil'ki's own fucking, getting into the rhythm. Making Hil'ki bite back cries. 

The elf was clenching almost instinctively now. And this stopped being a bargain and became something else, became a dance. Hil'ki fucking himself on Omar's cock, Omar stroking Hil'ki's tiny member in answer, the two of them moving together, building bliss.

They came together. It was messy and dirty, all that cum bloating Hil'ki's belly, the pale green elf-spend filthying up Omar's own stomach. Omar pulled the little creature tight to him without thinking about it, let Hil'ki shudder and cry out.

His mind was oddly clear. He normally retreated right to the honey-wine after a fuck. Now he remembered that he had a crocus-flower healing salve that might help with Hil'ki's no-doubt ruined cunt. Amayi's, too. He'd forgotten he had that salve. But he did -- it was at the bottom of his medical bag.

Hil'ki was muffling his little moans into Omar's shoulder. But when he quieted, he was able to say, his voice a bit unsteady, "Omar good? Or want more? Hil'ki can--"

"Good," Omar assured him. "That was good. You're paid in full. And anytime you want to pay like that, you're welcome to."

Hil'ki nodded tearily. Omar helped him shift so that the big prick slid out of him. Hil'ki winced a bit. Cum dripped out from his hole onto Omar's thigh.

"Is one clutch, Tends Leaves clutch. Roul'vi of that clutch, his babies have bad legs," Hil'ki was saying now, in a great rush. "Torrat, Amayi's uncle's _kelli_ , he bad in hearing. Hit in ear, very bad. Bleeds in ear, for many years. Kalyi, good elf, he sick for many months. Clutchmates want know if will live. And Howat, Hil'ki's clutchmate, he need help too--"

Omar nodded along, knowing he would be unable to say much more. To offer any kind of assistance, he would have to see these various elves with their various maladies. But before that, there were one or two elves around here that he could help right now.

"Let's get you tended first," he told Hil'ki gently. "Then I can give your friend something to help with his own bruising. Then you can show me all these other elf friends of yours."

Elves, as a rule, were beautiful by human standards, and so Hil'ki was beautiful even if to Omar he seemed to look basically like all the rest of his people. But when he smiled like this, fast and sincere, Omar thought he looked perhaps a hundred times more striking and distinctive than even the very lovely Amayi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am aiming to update this once a week, as I am no longer in quarantine and can't do daily updates. If you enjoy this at all, please let me know! If you want to know more about Hil'ki, he shows up briefly in some of the other stories in this series. However, you don't have to read those stories to get this one, as it is set in an entirely different part of the world.


	2. Hil’ki of the Elven District

Omar had always thought that the ragged district must be the worst district in the city.

This was because he was from Hakash, where the people were pious enough that all districts were more or less the same. The wealthy in Hakash did not flaunt their wealth, and simply lived side by side with the poor. 

But in Praknita the wealthy were all flaunt, taking their cues from Ladolat. And the poor were distinctively poor as well, loud in their begging and insistent in their whoring. The alleys of the ragged district rang with enough sluts' moans and drunkard's yells to rival the debauchery onboard a Monrovian Royal Exploration Company trading ship. This was nothing like the perfumed, still quiet of the Master Physician's street. Thus Omar had formed an opinion of Praknita that easily identified Prince Ladolat and the Master Physician's district as the best, his own as decidedly the worst.

Then he went to the elves' district.

To call it a district was a joke. The elves evidently could not pay the taxes necessary to reside in Praknita proper. So they lived outside the city's red walls, in a low pit of streets between the docks and Praknita itself. They did not have even the rough red buildings of Omar's district. They had odd, lopsided warrens of brick, evidently scavenged from the Monrovian encampments of a decade ago. These little huts were chokingly hot inside, for brick was a poor thing to employ to build a home here in Irvidni, as the Monrovian invading force had eventually discovered.

Now Monrovians all lived in the district that housed their incredible railway. That district was cool white marble. Ladolat had given it to them in exchange for heaps of jewels, and so their generals supped with Prince Ladolat and sang his praises. It was said that, so long as they kept singing his praises, Ladolat had no objections at all to permitting them to use Praknita, and the railway, to access and conquer the rest of Irvidni. 

The jungle elves, or _D'lani_ , as Hil'ki insisted they be called, were like Omar's own people. Like Hakash, like the other Irvidni cities, like many of the people of Praknita. They were too low to break bread with Monrovians. They were simply another conquered race.

They came from a series of jungle islands even hotter than Praknita, and thus Omar supposed they didn't mind their boiling brick huts. But Omar was gasping a bit when he was let into the brick home of the elf Kalyi.

Mostly from heat. But also from how many ragged, skinny, green-tipped creatures had been forced into this terribly hot, airless space. In the corner, one small elf nursed three or four little infants. Another sang to them. A third, much bigger, with the features of a grown man, was sleeping curled next to those two. Two more grown elves talked low and stirred a pot by yet another little one, who was weaving together a coarse fabric of some kind. Just next to this one was the unfortunate Kalyi, much paler and thinner than his fellows, with a cough that wracked his whole body and disrupted the song of the others.

So there were nine or ten alone in this hut, and there were perhaps seventy or eighty huts altogether, and Omar, who had always seen the elves here and there and presumed there might be a few scattered throughout Praknita, now had the strange realization that in fact there was a whole elf city here.

In the shadow of the red-walled city. Where even a drunken failure like Omar was too good to go.

Most of these elves did not seem to speak Irvidni, or even Baruem, the tongue of Hakash. The two by the cooking pot conversed lightning-fast with Hil'ki in their own language. They nodded to Omar when this was done, as if giving him permission to approach Kalyi.

The weaving one drew close to that sick creature and crooned at him. Kalyi hardly responded. His face was flushed and his eyes were sightless. Omar could think of four or five human maladies this could be, and cursed himself for not remembering the teachings of Dr. Nenge. 

Because there were maladies peculiar to the elves, as well. Omar could not be sure any diagnosis he might give could account for those. He could only drop his medical bag and kneel before the little creature, and root around in his bag for writing paper. He would treat and take down the symptoms. Create his own record. It might not help this Kalyi, but perhaps -- perhaps it would help the next one. 

"I don't know if I'll be able to do anything," he told Hil'ki, over his shoulder. The little elf had helped Amayi to that elf's own brick hut, and now stood in the doorway of this one.

"Is alright," Hil'ki said. "Without Omar, we have nothing. Omar _try_ , that enough. Omar try, and Hil'ki pay for that."

-

Pay Hil'ki did.

Not that cunt could cover Omar's rent, or get him the crocus, herbs, and roots to make his medicines. For that only rudins or gold would do. But Hil'ki came from his own clutch, for the elves always had large families. So, not two days after Omar treated Amayi and assisted the probably-dying Kalyi, he found a tall, manly elf assigned to bring him well water three times a day, an act that freed up time to take patients who _could_ pay. The water-bringing elf was the scowling Yorrat, who did not seem to like Omar. Yann, Yorrat's equally muscled twin, was a bit friendlier, thanking Omar in halting Irvidni for the help given to Amayi, and fixing the crooked assistant physician's sign above Omar's door one day.

Haalki, who was so like Hil'ki that Omar actually mistook him for the other elf at first, appeared punctually of evenings to tidy up Omar's examination space. Hennat, another Hil'ki-twin, volunteered to do Omar's washing down by the river once a week.

Howat, the fourth identical golden-haired clutchmate, was one of Omar's next patients.

There was something off about Howat. It was hard for Omar to diagnose, because Howat, unlike his siblings, had never learned Irvidni. But this was not from stubborness or from lack of teaching, as it was with some of the elves, Hil'ki explained. This was because Howat simply couldn't.

His hum was off. Omar could detect it, even without knowing what a D'lani hum should sound like. They all hummed musically, but Howat's humming song was confused with erratic twists and fast-paced turns that the others did not have. The elf's eyes were less intently focused on anything than Hil'ki's, and he avoided really looking at Omar. At anything. He was physically quite as fit as his brothers, but Howat seemed to have a harder time paying attention to things, and it took Hil'ki several rounds of firm instruction to even get Howat up on the examination table.

"Is not stupid," Hil'ki insisted, sounding almost distressed. "Howat just -- off. Not speak D'lani. But work with us when we in Monrovia for work, yes? Can do leaps for shows. We work in Circus. With Drukk and Eelie and Clay Lady. Howat like that. But Howat not work here. Here clutch are servants. Howat is bad servant. Not speak Irvidni. Not understand humans. Beaten. Humans not like Howat, though he not bad to them."

Howat was peaceable, that was clear. Peaceable and distant. Omar had seen a range of people like this, in Hakash and Praknita, and they weren't always this calm. Indeed, he suspected that it probably took Howat great reserves of strength to be this calm, when even communicating to his brothers was hard. This sort of difficulty -- language-difficulty -- came in many forms, some of them as painful for the patient as for the families. 

"This could simply be him," he tried to tell the worried Hil'ki. "Not a sickness. Just--how he is. There is no rule that men must all be born excelling at speech. So too with your kind. Some of you are also permitted to be different, I think."

Hil'ki didn't seem surprised to learn that.

"But is better to have -- have letter, yes? From doctor. To show men, to show Monrovia-police by docks, and Irvidni-police here in Praknita. Letter say, 'Howat ill in head. Doctor Omar promise he not bad, though. Just -- just sick.' Then Howat, if he not listen when ordered, he maybe not beaten so hard?"

He sounded desperately hopeful, and yet also, in his own way, unconvinced. He made Howat turn so Omar could see a line of jewel-green bruises on the other elf's back. Howat squirmed, uncomfortable, but Hil'ki was openly crying now.

"Exploration Company beat him. Howat leave home yesterday, yes? We say, 'No. Stay home.' But he want see ocean. But Exploration Company -- they hurt him."

Omar swallowed hard. 

"Did they--"

Hil'ki nodded miserably. He prodded Howat into spreading his legs and lifting his ragged elfin caftan. Green bruises painted his inner thighs and his cunt was similarly bright, the color itself clear evidence of a harsh rape.

Howat just made an irritated, resigned noise. 

Omar felt inadequate. He was, he felt, mostly a failure when it came to treating elves. He had been able to do nothing to save Amayi's child, and had only documented whatever was happening to Kalyi. And while he could draft a letter for Howat, he wasn't certain it would do much.

"Can one of you stay with him?" he asked Hil'ki gently. "I will write whatever you like, but a person could protect him better than a letter."

Hil'ki wiped at his tears, face miserable. 

Omar was reminded of Nasir -- of being a small boy and anxious, and his own older brother saying, _Call for me if you need me, Omar. And I will come. Write me if you have to. I will fly to wherever you are._ But he had written, and Nasir had not come. Nasir was dead. Loving Omar had not made Nasir capable of overcoming his own weakness, Omar loving _him_ had not made Nasir capable of that. And so sometimes there were no remedies. Nothing but the least worst course to take. 

"We work," Hil'ki was now saying. "Work in palace. Servants. And if Yann stay, or Yorrat stay, or Haalki or Hennat, Howat slip away. He want ocean, want look for D'Nara cousins. Or go to city hunting park, climb trees. Howat not like staying still. Like child."

Howat gave an indignant snarl, as if he understood the comparison and felt it to be an insult. He snapped his legs closed and pulled down his caftan, and gave Hil'ki a look of utter betrayal.

"You not pleasant to be clutchmate to!" Hil'ki snapped. "Forty-one and act like child!"

Omar raised an eyebrow, for to him both brother-elves looked like youths on the cusp of manhood, but then Dr. Nenge and Haroun both said elves aged very slowly. They did not reach adulthood until forty-five to fifty, and had an extended period of youth when they were small like this. 

Howat said nothing now. Just scowled. And Hil'ki, Hil'ki actually looked ashamed of himself at only that. So perhaps Howat could communicate a bit better than his brother thought.

"I could keep him here when you can't watch him--" Omar offered, without really thinking, but Hil'ki shook his head.

"He run away! To trees or ocean. Always. No one can keep Howat."

Howat gave a tight little smile, as if he were proud of it.

"What if I promised him a walk every other day?" Omar said. "A walk to the city park, or to watch the sea--"

He was mad. He had no idea why he was offering this. He needed most of his non-working hours to himself, to get good and drunk. Only -- only for the past few days most of his non-working hours had been spent bemusedly watching golden-haired, green-tipped little elves do things for him. Gather up his physician's smocks, organize his medical bag.

Suck his cock, which Hil'ki had done very well in a dirty corner of the elves' district, just after the visit to Kalyi. 

Haroun help him, but Omar _liked_ getting his cock sucked. And his laundry done, and his water fetched. He liked waking to a clean hovel instead of a filthy one, and he even liked the strange hums the elves gave off occasionally, when they passed each other on his stoop -- Hennat with the washing basket, Hil'ki dragging in some sad little elf patient that wanted to know if its babes would ever walk correctly (yes, it was only that they'd been born with a minor deficiency of the spine, one that was easily corrected with a few exercises Omar had shown them).

Now Hil'ki was shaking his head again, but there was an assessing look in his eye.

"You--you want someone go with you, Howat?"

Howat nodded. He poked Hil'ki in the chest.

" _Me_?" Hil'ki said. "I busy!"

He switched to rapid-fire D'lani, but Howat seemed unmoved by whatever he was saying. The mute elf looked to Omar and just rolled his eyes.

"I'll write him his letter, but let's split watching him six ways if we have to," Omar proposed. "You, your four other siblings, and me. And if he is good with each of you, then he earns himself a walk with me. And if he is good on the walks with me for a week, then he earns a walk with _you_ at the start of the next week. On River-day. I know even Ladolat gives his servants an hour or two off on River-day."

This compromise didn't exactly produce ecstatic agreement from either brother. In fact, Howat just rolled his eyes again, and Hil'ki kept up his irritated patter as if Omar hadn't spoken.

But eventually they agreed. And, though Hil'ki then had to leave to relieve Haalki at the palace (Omar could not be certain, but he thought the three identical elves were all running some kind of scam where they worked two jobs and pretended to be twins, possibly to better keep an eye on Howat), before the elf left he and Howat shook hands.

Yorrat arrived to collect Howat, and argued with Hil'ki in D'lani before Hil'ki left. The elf family all seemed to communicate by either arguing or singing, and so perhaps, Omar reflected, Howat had the right of it in simply being silent and self-possessed.

Yorrat stomped into the practice and looked livid. He was nearly of a height with Omar, and just as broad as the apprentice physician. He grabbed Howat by the arm and pulled him off the table.

"You no need come back to doctor when I work," he insisted. "You stay home."

Howat shook his head.

"It's alright--" Omar protested, and was shoved back for his troubles.

"No touch Howat," Yorrat insisted. "Only Hil'ki. Yes, Hakash pervert?"

Omar flushed.

"I was never going to touch him!"

Howat squirmed in his brother's arms. He didn't seem at all perturbed by the suggestion of Omar touching him, and in fact his blue eyes looked with interest at the bulge in Omar's pants. 

But even with that, a part of Omar, a part he thought he'd left behind in Hakash, was disgusted at the thought of betraying Hil'ki or the elves like that. Disgusted by the thought of behaving like the drunken sod he really was. Disgusted, too, at the thought of touching a being that might not be able to say, ever, if he even wanted a touch like Omar's.

-

That night, when Hil'ki returned, Omar got his cock sucked again.

He was starting to love Hil'ki's little, expert mouth. The elf was perfect wet heat around Omar's prick, and his deft hands would play with Omar's ballsack as he sucked, an added bit of filth never so much as contemplated by the sacred catalogues of Haroun. Hil'ki was shameless and practical in bed, sometimes offering just to hold Omar's cock in his mouth until the drink -- for there _was_ still drink, Omar liked drink too much to quit so simply -- lost its hold and he could fuck in earnest. 

He would say things like, "Hil'ki hear Omar good to Torrat today. Medicine Omar give him? First time Torrat's ear not hurt." And would give a little smile. And then his hands would let free Omar's cock and the elf would rub the big thick head gently on his own face, as if it were a dear friend. 

"What hole Omar want?" he'd croon to it. "Omar want cunt today?"

Hil'ki's cunt, properly soothed and slicked by the crocus-salve, which after all was also a balm to Omar's conscience, was always a good fuck. Omar hardly had to do any work at all. Hil'ki seemed perfectly fine fucking himself on it, giving pleasure with all his might. Omar probably could have let him do it without giving pleasure back.

He didn't want that, though. There was something to how easily Hil'ki came apart when his cocklet was stroked. He could let himself go impaled on Omar's cock then, as he shuddered his way through an orgasm. Omar would taste the elf spend, so green and vibrant a taste that the honey-wine would seem by contrast a poison, and make a note to try and list its refreshing properties in his physician's journal. 

"Omar," Hil'ki would pant, as if in correction. His little cunt would twitch so sweetly around Omar's cock. "No. Hil'ki to be drinking _your_ cum, Omar."

"You can," Omar would agree, pleased at how the bold, bossy elf had come apart on him, and in the back of his mind considering that payment enough.

Again, he worked for cheap. He saw an elf or two nearly every day now. There had to be at least a hundred of them in Praknita. And, like the humans, sometimes they skinned their knees or twisted their ankles. Sometimes their hips ached without reason, or they found themselves in a situation that only a quick procedure and a trip to dump the bundle in the river could remedy. Omar saw not just Hil'ki's clutch, the Guards-the-Branches, but came to recognize those of the Tends-Leaves and Watches-The-Sky. The exceptionally beautiful ones were of Amayi's clutch-lines, and those seemed to be called the Honors-The-Roots. They were cousins to Hil'ki's, children of some elf-sibling to Hil'ki's own parent, a now long-dead parent of the clutchline Tends-Leaves, who had sired Hil'ki but borne Yann and Yorrat. This made Kalyi likewise a cousin, and Kalyi had been born into the Tends-Leaves but in fact sired by the same clutch-line that had borne Torrat, which was the Sings-to-the-Bark, which was related, too, to Honors-the-Roots and thus Guards-The-Branches.

"Are there any elves you are not related to?" Omar asked once, astonished, after an elfling he'd just treated for a limp had thanked him profusely, and said shyly that cousin Hil'ki knew his business.

Hil'ki had stood with him in his doorway and watched the elf depart, his hobble on his new crutch now swallowed up by the raucous crowd at the mouth of the alley, where the ragged district marketplace was.

"What this mean, not related?" he demanded. "Elves _all_ related. Like trees. If not at branch, then at root. D'lani even related to D'Nara. Great elf, Eleyi, he wed sea elves. My _relli_ , my mother, he have cousin-clutch was of Eleyi prince-line. Was D'Nara _and_ D'lani. But--"

Here Hil'ki's face fell.

"They gone," he said. "Many clutches, Omar -- they just gone. Hundreds. Clutches of D'laniaa, that Monrovia steal. Kill. They all dead now. Lost. That why -- why we need keep Praknita clutches alive, yes? You important man to us, Omar. You help us. Come. What hole you want today? All Hil'ki for you, Omar."

This -- this must have been such a difficult thing for the little elf to say. If Omar had been a better man, he would have right then refused to touch Hil'ki. Haroun would have said that to help the helpless, to simply help Hil'ki because it was right and because the elves needed his aid -- that _that_ was what a man should do.

But Omar did not have the right of it. That night, feeling some special shame over the thought of those dead clutches, those lines of people even Haroun had not thought to catalogue, swallowed up by conquering and by history, he'd turned Hil'ki over.

He'd been a bit drunk. Clumsy when he rubbed the crocus-salve into Hil'ki's back pucker.

"This hole you want now?" Hil'ki had said easily. "Alright, Omar."

He'd borne Omar's rough preparation, breathing out a bit when Omar forced two fingers into him to the knuckle. Omar was quite unable to stop going for what he truly wanted, but he did feel the prickle of self-hatred take hold of him for it.

"It's really alright?" he'd demanded. "I don't normally -- I don't need to take this hole. I just want to tonight."

"Omar do what Omar want," Hil'ki agreed. "Yes? Is deal. Hil'ki take men there too, you know."

"When?" Omar asked now, confused. His prick was half-hard despite the fog of drink, but he mostly just wanted to understand where Hil'ki found the time. The little elf worked twice the shifts at the palace his siblings did, and seemed to constantly be darting from clutch-hut to clutch-hut in his free time, coaxing the sickest and sorriest of his people to see the doctor. Hennat had also told Omar that Hil'ki sucked off a scholar in the academy district sometimes, in exchange for lessons in Irvidni for the others; that he routinely tit-fucked a few Monrovians who might agree to smuggle mail to other elf settlements onto the railway for him; and that he occasionally offered his cunt to a select group of cloth merchants who would buy D'lani weaving as a result. 

Maybe he offered his arse, too. The complete Hil'ki package. But Omar, Omar stupidly wanted that just to be his. _He_ was, so far as he could tell, the one physician in the city who would deign to treat the elves.

And sometimes he thought Hil'ki might even like him a bit.

Hil'ki sighed.

"River-day, is Hennat or Haalki who walk with Howat, yes?"

"Is it?" Omar asked. He had kept to his side of the deal, and now regularly guarded Hil'ki's brother on walks about the city. And he had assumed Hil'ki would keep his end of it, as well. There had to be a reason Omar never saw Hil'ki on River-Day, after all. But now Hil'ki only sighed again.

"River-Day is temple day, yes?" he said. "All humans go to temples. Caste not matter. All humans clean in river at sundown. Good day for make money. Hil'ki's friend. Mr. Putnam. Monrovian. He have place for Hil'ki, near temples. Many humans want fuck Hil'ki on River-Day, before temple wash."

Omar paused, four knuckles deep in the little elf and quite dumbfounded.

"You're a part-time Monrovian brothel whore?"

He didn't like that. He was surprised at how much he didn't like it. Surprised to find that among his many flaws, his drunkenness and lechery and loose morals, he could count, too, a clear propensity for possessiveness and jealousy.

Hil'ki huffed out an annoyed breath.

"Omar," he said. "Hil'ki not always fuck for _free_. Yes? You need Hil'ki's cousins get medicine. Crocus. Must gather in hunting park. Not have permit, though. So must bribe guards for not to beat us. And herbs. Must buy from noble gardens. Nobles want money. Hil'ki gets money. Not everyone so nice as Omar, to take Hil'ki's cunt instead. Now, using Hil'ki's arse or not?"

He shoved himself back on Omar's fingers, pert and bossy. Omar blinked at him. He was -- he was out of sorts, unhappy and full of dislike for himself. He wanted to demand that Hil'ki stop offering up his cunt all the time, but then he also wanted to demand that Hil'ki only offer cunt to _him_. He wanted Hil'ki nowhere near a Monrovian brothel, and yet he wanted to know just what Hil'ki was made to do there, if those places were really so filthy as everyone said they were, and if Hil'ki would care to demonstrate, just a little personal demonstration, just for Omar. 

So his cock was completely hard now. And Hil'ki's arse was somehow even tighter than his taut little cunt. The elf made heart-wrenching, pained noises when Omar thrust into him, and Omar blinked, hating himself, and patted Hil'ki's trembling ribs ineffectually.

It felt incredible. It was a special effort to drag his cock out of the clinging, perfect ring of muscle.

"Sorry," he said, as he did it anyway. "I'm sorry, Hil'ki. I'll pull out--"

"No," Hil'ki insisted, voice a bit broken despite the word. "Omar want arse? Fuck me in arse. Yes. A--and Omar like playing with Hil'ki's cock, yes? Find good place in me, Omar. Good place back there. Make me cum when you hit it, yes?"

And then he was leaning forward on his elbows and clenching his little arse muscles. Omar groaned. He had to close his eyes to fuck Hil'ki like this, for if he kept them open he could see the screwed-tight pain on the elf's face. So he just held onto the narrow little hips and fucked into the perfect vise of Hil'ki's arse.

Searching for that place. He only opened his eyes when he hit it, when the spongy nub made Hil'ki cry out in pleasure instead of pain. Then he could look at the elf, still balanced on his elbows, now panting like a pleased little dog.

"O--Omar! _There_!" Hil'ki said. He was stroking his little cocklet, completely enmeshed in his own pleasure for once. It was a sight that made Omar's heart sing.

"You like this," Omar realized. "Better than your cunt."

Hil'ki nodded, eyes oddly bright. "M-more, Omar! Please!"

Omar angled his thrusts. Got that little sensitive place again and again and again. His own pleasure was a roaring thing, but he could ignore it if he looked at Hil'ki coming apart like this. Breathing so hard, crying out at every delightful hit inside him. 

"Omar," he kept whining. Sobbing. Omar snuck a finger to his cunt and was astonished to find it dripping, despite not having received a single touch at all. If Omar played with it as he fucked Hil'ki's arse, the little elf _really_ sang. 

Omar's name. Like Omar was all he needed, all he wanted. Hil'ki came from his cocklet first, with little song-prayers to Omar, and then gushed on Omar's fingers, the song never letting up. When he was limp and twitching, coming down from his own enjoyment, then Omar came inside him. Came as much on the sight of him as on the feel of his tight little arse.

It gaped when Omar slid out. Heavy white cum, Omar's cum, dribbled out of it. Omar stood and lurched to his kitchen space for a rag, then settled in behind the elf to wipe Hil'ki down. He worked the crocus salve into the enflamed green flesh of Hil'ki's pucker.

"That help with too much blood, yes?" Hil'ki asked him sleepily. 

Omar nodded, then realized that Hil'ki was not looking at him. Hil'ki was only just recovering from drooling onto his pillow, which felt like a special victory. Omar dared to pat the pretty golden curls, and Hil'ki just gave a happy sigh.

"The salve keeps swelling down," Omar explained. "And yes, it does get the blood flowing, instead of pooling in one place."

"That why -- green, sore cunt. It get salve, and feel better," Hil'ki said sleepily. "But if -- if put on, we say, Hil'ki's fingers. Green blood in Hil'ki's fingers fades, yes?"

"Well, I don't see why you would need to do that--" Omar began, but Hil'ki just kept nodding to himself sleepily.

"How young you can use salve, Omar? Can give a child?"

"A child shouldn't _need_ it," Omar said, horrified.

Only he knew perfectly well why a child might. After all, even if he was forty-one, Hil'ki himself looked barely older than a youth, and Omar still fucked him. An innocent like Howat was not safe from some men. And Omar had yet to understand just what had happened to the elf Amayi, Ladolat's bed servant, who was a young elf, not large and mature like Yann or Yorrat, and therefore could be as old as forty-nine but also as young as fifteen.

But Hil'ki just sighed. 

"You are sweet, Omar," he said, though Omar had never really shown him any evidence of that. "I can sleep here? Yann is court with Tai'vi. Good elf, Tai'vi. But fucking is loud, yes? Better to sleep here."

He snuggled into Omar's bedding drowsily, eyes already closing. Omar finished treating him and pulled his one ragged cover over the elf, then carefully lay next to him. 

When Hil'ki was breathing in-out, steady, Omar dared to sneak his arms around the elf. Hil'ki was a cool little brown body in his arms, his heart beating like a hummingbird's wings. Dr. Nenge said all dryads, all jungle-elves, had heartbeats like that. Little bird-hearts, to match their pretty, bright-tipped coloring.

Omar, by now resigned to the fact that he was a scoundrel, dared to steal a small kiss, and then promptly hated himself for it, and told himself never to do it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omar, sweetie, that’s called a crush.


	3. Putnam’s House of Pleasures

It wasn't hard to find the brothel run by the Monrovian scam artist, Arthur Payton Putnam.

Putnam was notorious. He had a great circus that he sent all over the world, but which was based in Praknita, in the pleasure park district, which was indeed right by the temple district, as this was the sort of city Praknita was. The pleasure park district was more popular among the lower castes than the more expensive night garden district. 

There were great signs for Putnam's House of Pleasures in both of those districts, written in Irvidni, in Monrovian, in Turikkh. Omar had been a good student, and could read all those tongues. 

He could thus read the special notice for River-Day amusements.

_Fuck a green jungle elf before your cleansing! The finest cunt in the world, or A.P. Putnam isn't an honest man!_

A great deal of graffiti tended to cover this. After all, every resident of Praknita knew full-well that the promise of honesty was a bare-faced bit of nonsense. The famed Monrovian liar and scoundrel, Lord-General John Taverner, had tricked Praknita into surrendering the territory leading to Hakash and the valuable Rojnari pass a generation ago, cannily turning the nobles against the arrogant Ladolat, and winning Ladolat's favor for his own barbaric nation. He had then been able to march his armies on Hakash, another city which soon fell to his wiles. Since then, no Praknitan, no Hakash -- no sensible person, period -- would ever do anything but laugh at the idea of an honest Monrovian. 

Still, Omar saved up his coin for River-Day. On that day, the one day he rarely saw any elves at all, he knew Hennat or Haalki would be taking Howat to see the ocean. Yann would be with his sweetheart, the young elf Tai'vi, a remarkably fertile little thing that had come to Omar with a delicate problem four times now, and who Omar understood all the other elves were mad to see properly wedded. And Yorrat would, no doubt, be scowling at something. 

Hil'ki would be selling his green cunt, the finest in the world, at the behest of this Arthur Payton Putnam. Omar put on clean clothes, prayed -- though he felt stupid to do it, it was a comforting thing to do, for all that he usually ignored the prayer hours in favor of a bottle of honey-wine -- and then gathered up his meager coin and set out for Putnam's.

It was a huge stone house with a fountain in the courtyard. Farmers, traders, and merchants mingled there with pretty, painted whores who carried around trays of sweet alcoholic coconut wine, pineapple wine. Omar's mouth watered and his fingers itched. Sometimes he was so, so tired of drinking cheap honey-wine. 

But he hadn't come here for that. And none of these whores was Hil'ki. They were too tall, their skin not dark enough, their hair far too dark indeed. Most were plainly humans, though some were painted to resemble elves, painted green at their fingertips. Omar brushed past them, frowning, and entered the wide double-doorway.

A colorless, slender man descended upon him. Four-armed, with two long tentacles waving out from beneath his strange sarong, and emanating a great deal of soundless cold. Omar stepped back. This colorless being was an Eelie, one of the wicked tentacle-demons that all the holy men of Hakash had exiled to the Eeyanu desert, because of the Eelies' endless hunger for human pain. Though around them a number of merchants frolicked with whores, now the whole room narrowed to the Eelie. Haroun had called them the most despicable of beings. They did not even permit a man the right to direct his attention where he would.

"Easy," the Eelie-demon said, rolling his eyes. His Baruem was flawless, and unsettling, for though Omar was the characteristic pale-brown of the Hakash and not the slightly darker brown of most residents of Praknita, Omar would not have expected a creature like the Eelie to know the difference on sight. His cold hands, all four of them, he now primly clasped behind his back. "I'm only one of the hosts for the evening, darling. Here to direct you to what you _do_ want, if it's not a tentacle-fuck."

Omar thrust forward the poster he'd stolen from a wall a few houses down. The one that said, very plainly: _green cunt_.

"How many elves do you have working here?" he demanded. "Just one?"

He didn't want to end up with Amayi, if Amayi also worked here on River-Days. Or Torrat, or Kalyi's brother Kou'ki. Or anyone, in fact, but Hil'ki.

"Don't worry, darling. The one we have is practiced at taking cock, but clever enough to work at keeping himself tight for all comers. There's a bit of a wait for him, though," the Eelie noted. "He's popular."

"How much to skip the line?" Omar demanded.

The Eelie raised one colorless eyebrow. 

"That's not fair play, darling. But since you asked--"

He named an astonishing number. Far too high for Omar. Omar gritted his teeth. Then he pulled forward his tattered medical bag, and counted out what he did have. 

"Put me as far ahead in the line as this will get me," he said ruthlessly.

The Eelie passed his cold gaze over the coins, then nodded.

"Still will be a bit of a wait. But you can hear his pretty cries, darling, so it's worth it. And part of the wait is cleaning him between uses. It _is_ River-Day, after all. And all you pious Hakash do so love to fuck a clean bitch."

Omar quite wanted to knock him flat, to hear Hil'ki called a _bitch_ so coarsely. But he kept his temper under control, and chose instead to follow the Eelie across the great, crowded room, then up a set of red stone steps to a landing. They turned and walked down a long balcony, pockmarked by silk-curtained doorways from which moans emanated. Then they were turning again, onto a long, high-ceilinged hall. There, men formed a line before a green door. Pretty Irvidni boys and girls flitted between them, taking their waiting cocks in hand and stroking them off while they waited. Some of the older men declined.

"I want to save myself for the elf," said a portly merchant.

The Eelie deposited Omar just behind this man. Evidently buying a spot earlier in line was perfectly acceptable, for no one batted an eye. There were three men before Omar: the merchant, a tall Monrovian who was getting his cock sucked, and a hairy-legged creature with the most unsightly smell Omar had ever experienced.

Omar recoiled. _That_ would be fucking Hil'ki? His Hil'ki? No. 

The Eelie was now grinning. One of his awful, cold hands patted Omar's cheek.

"Twenty minutes apiece with him, darling. That's the rule. He only works one day a week, so he has a quota, you see. The other rule is not to be too rough. Elves are gentle things. They can't take it."

Then he and all his fluttering cold were walking away. Omar stood there, awkward and angry and worried and _wanting_. He simply wanted.

Though he did not want this. But this was the closest way to try and understand Hil'ki, what Hil'ki did on River-Days. 

A pretty girl-whore dropped gracefully to her knees before him, but even before she could entreat him, Omar waved her away.

"No," he said. "I only want the elf."

Oh. Oh, Haroun save him. He was insane. Why had he come? He only wanted the elf, and so did this foul merchant next to him, clad in his sweaty silks. So did the cruel fair-haired Monrovian who was choking an Irvidni boy with his cock. So did that -- that _thing_ by the door, which Omar could not even classify. It hadn't appeared in the catalogues of Haroun, and was therefore perhaps some kind of lower demon.

Omar felt low and filthy, and he felt too as if he was doing something wrong to Hil'ki. But he could not make himself turn around and leave. He stayed in line, in the spot he'd paid for, watching with dread as the line grew longer and longer. There must have been twenty men standing there by the time the cries -- cries so muffled and dirty they hardly sounded like composed, bossy Hil'ki -- died down.

A red-faced farmer stumbled out of the green door. Omar watched in horror as he did up his trousers, in the process tucking his softening prick back in, and then the hairy-legged, cloven-hoofed demon entered the room. Omar clenched his fists. 

He told himself that, without fail, at the first cry he heard he must batter that door down and try to kill the beast. He did not want that thing inside Hil'ki.

But now no cries came. Some five long minutes passed, and then the cloven-hoofed thing came out and doffed its strange flat cap at the line of men.

"Beggin' your pardon for the wait, good sirs. He's ready for the next one. Twenty minutes, sir, and not too rough, and if you're not out by the time the bell rings I'll drag you out myself," said the demon-creature very amiably, in Monrovian-accented Irvidni.

The Monrovian man shoved off the whore that was sucking his prick, and strode beyond the green door. The queue obediently shuffled forwards. Omar had a minute of clear, bright relief, before the cries started up again. And this time it was Hil'ki, undeniably Hil'ki's musical voice, but tinged with an edge of pain, as if the Monrovian wasn't bothering with his comfort at _all_.

And Omar couldn't force himself past the door. The demon now leaned against it, amiably smoking a turmeric-cinnamon cigarette that did little to improve his rancid, goatlike smell. Omar could see the well-toned lines of his muscled shoulders, the beastly, wicked legs that would surely kill a man with a kick. And -- and he did not want to fight the demon. For some of these damnable humans in line next to him were smirking, like they _liked_ the sound of Hil'ki being hurt, but the demon was not smirking. The demon had an ear to the door and was frowning. 

After only a minute or so, he said, "Easy, sir," very loudly for the benefit of the whole line, and then, in Monrovian for the customer, "Not too rough! That's the bloody rule, innit? Or d'you want my fist in your face?"

Then Hil'ki's cries quieted a bit, to softer sobs that could have been pleasure, but likely weren't. The demon slid back a panel in the door and peered through. His lips were still tight in a frown, but he seemed to find what he saw to be acceptable. He slid the panel closed and turned to face the crowd again. He caught Omar looking at him.

"I'll break you to bits if I catch any of you being too rough," he warned. "That's old George's rule, see?"

Omar nodded. He was grateful for the demon. He was a creature so low he could be grateful for a demon. And his feet felt like lead. He wanted now to leave, to run out, but felt rooted to the spot. He thought that perhaps he'd never felt like such a failure. He had been a failure as a physician for months now, and a failure as a brother and son for twice as long. But now he was a failure as a _man_. He was permitting this to happen, like a coward. When the Monrovian strode out, glowing with the satisfaction of emptying his load into Hil'ki, Omar could scarcely shuffle forward with the rest of the line. The man behind him actually pushed him to get him to do it.

The merchant took the full twenty minutes. But now Hil'ki was quieter, and there weren't the slapping sounds of his cunt being so roughly used. Omar wondered if the demon only cleaned him up, or if he also offered words to comfort, helped Hil'ki compose his mind. It was hard to think of Hil'ki discomposed, but Omar could not think of any other way an elf fucked by twenty men in a single night could possibly be.

He would -- he would apologize to Hil'ki. He would kneel before the creature and apologize for coming here. He would offer Hil'ki the crocus-salve in his medical bag. He would tell Hil'ki that from now on he would help the elves for free, for nothing. And perhaps he would fall to his knees and pray, and ask the God of men to not make him, Omar, such a beast.

But when he was finally let behind the green door, he did not see Hil'ki at all.

Not Hil'ki's distinctive face, with the cheekbones a bit wider than Haalki's, the eyebrows not so peaked as Howat's, the chin much pointier than Hennat's. Not his firm, toned limbs, either. The room behind the green door was really a closet, with a washstand in one corner and a slanted deep ledge jutting out from the wall. 

Hil'ki was _in_ the ledge. There was no other way to put it. It had clearly been constructed as a kind of closed box, which allowed Hil'ki's arse and cunt and little cocklet to poke out into the cool air of the room. His spread, lifted thighs disappeared behind the rim of the ledge, though, and so did the rest of him. He was securely trapped inside the wall, with only his green-tinged genitals exposed. 

The genius of the great Monrovian scam artist, Arthur Payton Putnam. He sold green cunt. Only that. Not -- not the rest of the elf, it seemed.

Omar could not decide if he was relieved or horrified. He approached Hil'ki and could hear the little elf's measured breathing through the thin wall panel. 

Steeling himself for the next customer. Who was Omar. Omar took in a careful breath of his own.

He dropped to his knees before the wall. Hil'ki's cunt had been wiped down, but when he parted it with his fingers, spend dribbled out. There was spend in his little rear hole, too. Of course there was. Omar rubbed both holes carefully, until he heard Hil'ki's breath hitch to show the elf was feeling some pleasure. 

The little cocklet was standing up, too. Good.

Omar set himself to licking the pretty green cunt. Good, long licks, determined ones. Tasting the fresh green taste, flavored too with the bitter ugliness of other men. That was not Hil'ki's fault. But Omar could help clean it out of him, this ugly leaving. This was so foul a drink it rivaled the cheapest honey-wine, and he didn't want it pooling in his Hil'ki. He licked and licked and sucked it out. Hil'ki was giving little pleased cries, and shaking beneath Omar's tongue. 

Omar steadied a hand on the round little arse. His other hand he used to scoop spend out of Hil'ki's pucker. If he worked his fingers in, he'd find the spot, for he knew where it was. He'd lick Hil'ki from the front and massage that place in the back, and make the little elf come so bright Hil'ki would forget he was trapped in a filthy brothel wall. Omar could do that for him.

So he did. He got a good rhythm, deliberate about lapping at Hil'ki's folds and fucking his fingers deep into Hil'ki's rear. Until the elf was shrieking his pleasure and coming, and then Omar lunged up and captured the tiny cocklet, drank down the green spend. Hil'ki was moving his little arse, trying to thrust for more, and Omar spared a moment to imagine what his face must look like. Tear-streaked and shocked and _open_ , given over to nothing but the pleasure a mysterious stranger had brought him. 

Omar had brought him.

Omar's cock was heavy and straining in his trousers. And then -- then the bell rang.

He did not immediately stand up. He was drunk on Hil'ki's taste, so he could only blink, coming to. Put a hand on the wall and stagger up, trying to root around for his crocus salve. He ought to have also rubbed some salve into Hil'ki. The elf was too flushed. 

But now the green door slammed open. The demon George had him by the shoulder, his grasp firm.

"Time's up, sir," he said, in a voice that wasn't menacing but that promised menace soon, if Omar did not get a move on.

"Just let me give him some of this," Omar stammered, holding out the salve. "It will help him through the night--"

He quite forgot that just because Hil'ki was trapped in a wall didn't mean Hil'ki wouldn't hear him.

There was a little gasp. The panel over Hil'ki's face slid open.

" _Omar_?" said the green-flushed elf, blinking into the light.

Despite the two simultaneous orgasms Omar had just given him, he did not look or sound precisely pleased. 

-

Hil'ki made George pause the line, pulled on a wrinkled green dressing gown he had apparently been using as a pillow, and dragged Omar up several flights of stairs behind a hidden doorway.

He dropped Omar in an airy room, full of floor cushions and scented lamps for heating poppy-pipes, in which a chinless, agreeable Monrovian man was reclining.

He had ginger sideburns, and was also dressed in nothing but a dressing gown. He looked nothing like he did on his posters.

"Mister Putnam!" Hil'ki said, stamping his foot. Omar was stunned to hear him speaking Monrovian, just as heavily-accented as his Irvidni, but still passable Monrovian. Better, in fact, than Omar's Monrovian. "This Omar! You hold him here, yes? Omar not to see me here. Omar get it for _free_ , so no reason! Omar is -- is _crazy_ or something--"

"Sorry," Omar said in Irvidni, quite chastened. Hil'ki was still flush with confusion and evident anger. He did not seem to enjoy the thought that Omar had paid for him, not in the least.

"This not deal!" he hissed at Omar, also in Irvidni. "We talk when I done working--"

"You'll be taking those men for hours," Omar pointed out. "I just wanted you to have some salve--"

"I paid lots of money to work one day! _One_! I paid more than palace. I put your salve when I am done, then I sleep. Then I go see you. Every week! See you when I done here. I need to see you River-Day too? You important man, Omar, but not only man! You shut up and stay here, so we talk when I done."

Then he was stomping off, head held high. As if he were not going to crawl back into a wall again, to take a row of dirty, insistent cocks. Omar blinked after him miserably.

Arthur Payton Putnam took a huff of his poppy pipe.

"Speak Monrovian, old chap?" he tried. "Because I don't speak a damn word of Irvidni, so we'll be bored if you're here all night just gabbling in monsoon-talk, and I'm chattering off in the King's tongue."

Then, inexplicably, he added, "What?"

-

"I speak Monrovian, Irvidni, Baruem, Turikkh, and Eeyanu," Omar had to explain to Arthur Payton Putnam, several times. But his Monrovian was not so good. He could not remember the different names Monrovians gave to Irvidni and Hakash, and it took a lot of back and forth before Putnam realized he meant _Irvidistan_ and _Hakanbul_.

"And you're from there? Dashed minaret place, what? With all the prayers? You're not even wearing a turban," Putnam said, sounding admiring. "Well, damned forward sort for a follower of Haroun, what? I always thought your kind prayed nine times a day and didn't come to brothels."

"It is the people of Turikkh who wear turbans," Omar said, and if he hadn't taken several huffs of the poppy pipe his eye would have been twitching. "An entirely different religion, _irshandi_."

"That means 'honored white man,' what?" Putnam asked agreeably. "I know that one!"

" _Something_ like that," said Omar, though it meant, actually, something a great deal more offensive than that.

But it was hard to know if Putnam's stupidity and offensiveness was actual stupidity, merely his Monrovian heritage, the effects of the poppy pipe, or else the communication barrier between them. Omar of course thought he was saying things the right way in Monrovian. But he would feel odd, frustrating gaps in his vocabulary, or phrase something in a way which, upon Putnam's response, he would come to realize was entirely wrong. He wondered if Hil'ki felt this way all the time. Even former scholars like Omar didn't speak D'lani. Only the D'lani spoke D'lani. 

He felt a sudden admiration for the little elf's determined, heavily-accented Irvidni. And then he promptly felt ashamed of himself, and worried to boot.

Hil'ki had seemed very angry. And rightly so. Omar had come to purchase him as a whore, without so much as a warning in advance. Omar should have at least _told_ him he was coming -- 

But no. No, he hadn't wanted to really look himself in the face like that. A man who whored, and drank, and had no real livelihood. Who freely smoked the poppy pipe, and prayed to nothing, these days. Who laughed a bit when Hil'ki or his fellow elves phrased things the wrong way. He had never accused Hil'ki of calling him, say, 'the honored human doctor,' but otherwise he came quite close to being just as stupid and offensive and foul as Arthur Payton Putnam.

And he thought the elf would want to be his? His alone?

Omar was deluding himself.

It was easy, in an ugly mood like this, to slide deeper and deeper into poppy. Unlike Putnam, who seemed practiced with the pipe, Omar could not seem to keep his eyes open. He drifted, not quite sleeping but not quite not. He was hazy and lost any sense of himself. This was how honey-wine had used to make him feel, before honey-wine became a necessity. Just like this, just this self-less and free.

He came to when pink morning sun was streaking through the windows, and he found himself in Hil'ki's lap.

"--yeah, Naj quit the show," a rough voice was saying, in Monrovian. "Got tired of being the belle of the act, I guess, and now we've got no Clay Woman. But enough about her. Hardly ever writes!" 

"Not her fault," said Hil'ki. "Post system broken, George."

"They all say that. How's my Haalki?" 

"He good, George. Missing you."

"Good. Hope 'e's got the boys crazy for 'im--"

"He want save up before he marry. He practical. Not like Hennat--"

The cool voice of the Eelie cut in.

" _That_ one is one to watch out for--"

"Well, he have two or three sweetheart. He not like me, Tsisk. His womb working, yes? Have heat four times now. So very popular--"

"Do _all_ elves care so much about fertility, Hil'ki?" purred the Eelie. "I always thought you were a catch, you know--"

"You like make me cold, evil thing," Hil'ki said, scornfully but without real heat. " _You_ not care about heat--"

"But you bear it so well, every single show, love," said Tsisk the Eelie. "The only one who does."

Omar didn't like the sound of that. Abruptly, he was sober and his head was hurting him. He tried to shove himself up, and found Hil'ki's skinny arms shoving him down again. He blinked up at the elf. Hil'ki had a poppy pipe in his mouth.

"You not scowl," he instructed, after taking a drag. "You drink and smoke, Omar. Always you drink, and now you smoke. I smoke one day in week, yes? So you not scowl. You want explain why you come here?"

"I was worried about you," mumbled the chastised Omar. 

The cold, pale Eelie let out a thin little laugh. Omar stared at him and discovered that Tsisk had a passed-out Arthur Payton Putnam in his lap.

No. Not passed out. Moaning. Putnam was moaning, as a tentacle moved inside his pale Monrovian rear. Tsisk looked amused by this, and patted the ginger sideburns almost kindly. 

"I could smell it on him," the Eelie told Hil'ki now. "That worry. He's not lying. That's why I put him so far in the line, darling, though he paid basically nothing for the privilege. I thought he might be a nice respite for you."

"Could have warned me," grunted George the cloven-hoofed demon, who also had a poppy pipe. "Big fella like him. Thought he might hurt Hil'ki."

"Omar not hurtful," Hil'ki said almost affectionately, pulling Omar closer into his little lap. "Just stupid. Omar, next time you worried, you talk, yes? I tell you. Mister Putnam's work not so bad. I work for him all summer--"

"All summer?" Omar demanded, horrified.

"In _shows_ ," Hil'ki said, rolling his eyes and looking, for a moment, identical to his quieter, more sarcastic brother Howat. "Most not for sex, either. Shows in Monrovia, for circus. Me and my tuo, we go work for him. Make good money, and Howat like it. Then we come back, be servants. That little bit of money. So Mister Putnam give me this work, yes? Easy way for more money."

"Isn't Monrovia too cold for you?" Omar mumbled. Dr. Nenge always mentioned that elves needed heat. Haroun had said the same, particularly about jungle elves.

"That why we go in summer," Hil'ki said, sighing. "Nice in summer. But no D'lani there. Met one D'lani there only--"

George and Tsisk both groaned now.

"The fairytale elf!" George grunted. "Pretty as a doll--"

" _Beautiful_ ," Hil'ki insisted.

"With raven-black hair," Tsisk added archly.

"I'm sure that's not possible," Omar managed.

It wasn't. Haroun was clear about the elves. The green-tipped jungle elves had golden hair like sunlight, and the blue-tipped water elves pale blond hair like moonlight. The red-tipped elves of the hells had hair of silver; and the angels -- their hair was simply made of the heavens. 

No elves had black hair.

"Was possible," Hil'ki insisted now. "Anka -- Anka _perfect_ , Omar. Beautiful like Amayi. But not normal, yes? Howat not normal. Not talk. Torrat not normal. Not hear. Hil'ki not normal. Not have heats. So maybe Anka have black hair, not be normal like that, yes?"

This all made sense to Omar's fuzzy brain, as indeed Hil'ki always made sense when Omar felt like this. But now he blinked again.

"What do you mean, you don't have heats?" he demanded.

-

A discourse on the heats of the jungle elves.

Haroun, a pious man, had nothing to say on the topic at all. He never fucked an elf, not even a jungle elf. He'd only had long discussions with one, about the nature of God and burdens men owed to the heavens and to each other, there where a rainbow met the northernmost bridge leading out of Hakash.

So it fell to Doctor Azu Nenge to describe this phenomenon.

It was tied to an elf's life cycle. The jungle elves lived some two hundred years, and for fifteen-to-twenty they were in infancy, though they seemed to grow as men did in those years. Then, around fifteen-to-twenty, they had their first heats. Their little minds clouded up, and they woke sweaty and wanting. They could be bred even while not in heat, but heat made them so ready for it that a very fertile elf, like Tai'vi, could be expected to have heats just about all the time until he fell pregnant. Only an herb called D'laniaa junglegrass, which was expensive to grow outside of the elves' own islands, could forestall the heats and the ensuing fertility.

The Monrovian Royal Exploration Company had burned whole forests to get rid of that junglegrass. They prized elves in heat. It was said a man could fuck those elves and have them coming in seconds, coming and asking for more no matter how cruel or harsh the fuck was. 

Dr. Nenge had not recommended fucking them in such a vulnerable mental state. He was an Ordanian physician, and familiar with the elves, who after all were neighbors to Ordania. He'd had strong opinions on the evil misuse of the elves by the Royal Exploration Company. For this, he'd been exiled from Monrovia's medical academies and ended up disgraced in that nation, and now his books were hard to find, which was why only the Master Physician seemed to have any copies. 

But that is a digression. Regarding heats, Dr. Nenge made the extraordinary claim that an elf in heat was a creature so fertile it might be bred by anything. By a man, by a Northern sort of dog-demon called a Wrollf. By an Eelie or even a papery-skinned Omnion, a beast of the roadways between Praknita and Hakash. 

An elf that did not have heats, meanwhile, was quite defective. Biologically infertile. In old D'laniaa, according to Doctor Nenge, such an elf was called a _Yellikat_ , a bare branch, and considered fit only to be gently exiled to the Ordanian or Irvidni continents.

From studying the bodies of those lonely creatures -- who almost unfailingly committed suicide after a few years away from their communities -- Ordanian doctors had produced a near-perfect map of the D'lani form. Near perfect. They knew the wombs were not right. Because they had only been able to study the broken elves, the ones even the other elves did not want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is only relevant if you have read the other stories in the series — which you really don’t have to do to read this, tbh — but that time Hil’ki and Anka met at the circus? And Anka was both jealous and deeply admiring of Hil’ki? The feelings were entirely mutual.


	4. Yellikat-Relli

"I am sorry," Hil'ki said, when Omar was walking him to the elven district. It was still so early that there were only beggars on the streets. Omar could not think what he was sorry for.

"For not having heats?" he asked. "I--that's none of my business. But you should have told me. I can try to help you--"

Hil'ki shrugged.

"No, Omar. No one help. Sometimes D'lani just born like this. Yellikat. In D'laniaa, no need for Yellikat. All clutches free, and life good. But things different now. Here, no money for food for babies, for clothes. For doctor. Yellikat is useful. Men want fuck Hil'ki even if Hil'ki cannot have clutch. And that _good_. Having clutch with humans -- D'lani always have two-clutch. Human baby and D'lani baby. And humans, they want human baby, yes? Take human baby, leave D'lani. Is painful for relli, for elf-mother."

Omar stared at him. Hil'ki had found a stick by the gates of the hunting park and was trailing it in the dusty street, making a line with it. Omar knew he was over forty years old, but in elven years that was not even full adulthood. 

"I don't care that you can't have a clutch," he told Hil'ki now, carefully. 

Hil'ki flushed green.

"I know! Omar sweet."

But he didn't look like he had known. He looked strangely pleased. 

"You so nice at Putnam's," the elf added, with a grin. "Should have _known_. No one lick nice as Omar. Omar lick like -- like Hennat say _D'lani_ lick."

"You've really never had another elf pleasure you, then?" Omar asked, astonished. 

Hil'ki sighed.

"Is old -- not know word. _Uokan'i_. Thought of mothers, and ancestors. Yellikat not worth love. Branch not give blooms. Not every D'lani want have clutch for every fuck, yes? Tai'vi, he fuck and say he wish he were Yellikat, to stop having belly grow so much. But _Uokan'i_ is strong thought, thought about luck, yes? Yellikat not good luck--"

"An Uokan'i is a prejudice," Omar decided. "A stupid, pointless belief that brings only misery, generation after generation. I could tell you about some Uokan'is of my own people, Hil'ki. But you are not bad luck. You've been extraordinary _good_ luck to your people. You've brought them schooling and trade and medicine--"

Hil'ki's little smile returned.

"They not bad to me," he assured Omar. "I not ever marry, maybe. But Howat -- he not ever marry too. Amayi's relli say maybe this is why I am bare branch. I hold up Howat even if he is broken branch. So he not alone, either."

Omar could not think how this was a kind thought on the part of Amayi's relli, and said so.

"He mean no bad thing," Hil'ki said, shrugging. Then, he bit his lip, as if he were coming to a decision. "Come. I take you to Amayi's nest, yes? I want show something. You have salve?"

"Yes?" Omar said, confused.

"Good," Hil'ki decided. From the pocket of his loose trousers he produced a pot of something. Something green.

"Paint, yes? Mr. Putnam give me."

"That's what the whores use to make themselves look like D'lani," Omar realized. "Why do you--"

" _Come_ ," Hil'ki insisted, and then he'd dropped his stick and was running. Omar, who had eaten nothing all night, and huffed quite a bit of poppy, could only follow him unsteadily, grateful that his legs were at least longer than Hil'ki's.

Amayi, who was so beautiful and who Omar knew by now was Hil'ki's best friend, lived in one of the worst hovels in all the elven district. Little more than a pile of bricks, sooty and dirty, with a filthy grey stream of garbage nearby. Inside, it was too hot for Omar, if perfectly fine for the elves. 

Amayi was one of a clutch of only two, and his brother, Arrat, was quite as lovely as he was. Both elves were sitting close by the hovel's one window, talking quietly, when Omar came in. 

Omar assumed the drunken, golden-haired lump by the cooking fire was the _relli_. That elf was an uncomfortable sight. He smelled of honey-wine, a familiar smell, and now Omar wondered if the empty look in his blue eyes ought also to be familiar.

 _Always you drink_ , Hil'ki had said. Yes, but did he look like this while he did it?

The smaller elves, however, were greeting each other with caresses and humming-songs. Arrat, Amayi, and Hil'ki, and in Amayi's arms--

"You didn't tell me he'd had the children!" Omar cried.

He kneeled before the little bundle in Amayi's arms. 

Of course he'd had the children. Amayi had seemed far along, and that had been months ago. But now, now Omar realized with a start that he'd been asked to attend no elven births at all, though plenty of the little creatures were pregnant or had newborns safely sequestered in their hovels. 

"We don't need a doctor to give birth," said Amayi, startling Omar, as always, with his flawless Irvidni. That was what came of being a royal bed servant. Ladolat, it was said, had no use for maintaining the schools, libraries, or postal service, but he had the highest standards for his whores. He wanted to be praised in all the tongues of the world, the people said.

Now Amayi added, a bit thoughtlessly, "We D'lani know what to do, you know. You needn't worry about us when it comes to having a clutch. Birthing a clutch is as easy as breathing."

Omar clenched his fists at this, and bit back his retort in favor of sparing a glance at Hil'ki.

Now -- how he could detect the odd little downcast turn to the elf's mouth. Why had he not noticed that before, the ten thousand times he had mentioned helping this elf or that elf rid themselves of an unwanted one? Had Hil'ki looked like this then, too?

At least Amayi had the grace to flush green.

"I mean -- it's instinctive," he stammered. "That's all I mean. You just push a bit, and bear the pain--"

Arrat chattered something apologetic in D'lani to Hil'ki. Hil'ki blinked, and shook his head as if to clear it. 

"We show Omar?" he asked Amayi. "His salve is help, yes? I want him see."

Amayi looked dubious. He clutched the squirming bundle tighter to his chest, where his heavy, milk-laden breasts were already leaving little spots of wet on his smock.

"No one knows but you and Arrat and mother," he said, low, to Hil'ki.

"But I go in summer," Hil'ki said. "I go to Monrovia. Circus, yes? So I no bring you salve and paint. But Omar -- he good man. He bring you both--"

"Why do you need both?" Omar demanded. Horrified thoughts were dancing in his mind. He remembered all too well Amayi's condition when the elf had come to him all those months ago. And even now, a bright green bruise decorated the pretty elf's collarbone, suggesting that Amayi's work in the palace had not eased much.

Amayi let out a long breath. 

He handed one of his little bundles to Arrat. The bundle squirmed in its uncle's arms, and Arrat cradled it gently. Then Amayi began to unwrap the second bundle. A little dark brown babe with blue eyes emerged. Golden fuzz on its head. It blinked up at Omar and cooed at the doctor, quite innocent. Its tiny hand fisted, then splayed itself, reaching up.

Omar stared.

The light inside the brick hovel was bad. But even in bad light, a man could tell red from green. And this child -- this child was not green-tipped.

"Father is D'Salu, yes?" Hil'ki said nervously. "Omar know D'Salu? Elves of many forms?"

Omar was desperately thirsty. He wondered if Amayi's relli had any honey-wine he could borrow. He looked down at the red-tipped infant hands, the red-tipped toes. The little hint of silver in the child's blue eyes.

"Hil'ki," he said slowly, "are you telling me that your best friend -- that Amayi fucked a demon of the hells?"

-

A note from the books of Haroun on the D'Salu, the Saluads, the most wicked of elves.

They were born from darkness, from which was made everything. They are thus makers. They make themselves cloaks of scales, and wear them, and slither into the cities of men disguised as adders. They tempt men, with their forked tongues and red-tipped fingers, to leave their wives, to leave their reason. They tempt women to abandon their chastity, their humility, their forbearance. They fell entire families in this way, by coaxing sons and daughters away, convincing those unfortunate people to run off and descend into madness in the Eeyanu desert. 

That is where most demons come from. From the Eeyanu, the great blank waste which lies just beyond the Rojnari pass. There live the Eelie-demons with their wicked mind-powers. The Omnion demons, which bury themselves in sand in infancy and emerge fully-grown decades later, to kidnap men and women and force them to bear their eggs. There reside ten million false gods, from the broken statues of the god once called the Lord Undying (who was a man, and who thus died), to the Star Goddess, the totem of whores and mad people and disobedient women.

And the D'Salu. The ones who can make anything, because they come from darkness, from which the God of man made almost everything except man, who of course was made mostly of His breath. The D'Salu are not made of heavenly breath. They are only darkness, inside themselves. So they do wicked things. Make frightening stone men to destroy their enemies. Beautiful stone women to humiliate their friends. 

They have no real friends, these Saluads. No real community. They are outcasts, and rightly so.

This is all of them that is written in the books of Haroun.

-

This was not perhaps the wisest way to take being let in on the secret. After his cry of horror, there followed a great deal of ragged, heartbroken crying, mostly from Amayi, as well as many snarling looks from Arrat. The red-tipped child was bundled back up and gathered close to his green-tipped brother. Hil'ki was extremely firm and unimpressed with Omar, and paced in the center of the hovel as he explained things.

"D'Salu is not _demon_! Is just--"

"They are elven shapeshifters who do not have the power to leap and soar and stick to the trees with the gifts of all the birds, as you do, or to become like sharks or clawed sea porpoises, as your cousins do. Instead they disguise themselves in order to come to the cities and there do their wickedness and trickery, often taking the form of snakes, particularly adders," Omar said, for the moment little more than a twelve-year old Hakash boy reciting facts in advance of his demonology test. "They are not as faithful, filial, or good as jungle or even water elves. They live alone, they pursue pleasure heedlessly, they care only for themselves--"

All three elves were staring at him like he was insane.

"Sirit isn't like that! He was kind! He gave me many gifts -- a hair-comb, and a little man of clay to help with chores," Amayi snapped. "Useful things!"

"He gave you a golem?" Omar cried. "Those are their worst agents of evil!"

He cast around for something to destroy the beast, rooting in the shabby cupboards in the corner, but could find nothing. Amayi's hovel had not even a single lentil to stick to a cooking pot.

"Golem not evil," Hil'ki was saying, in the meantime, rolling his eyes. "Good little man! Helpful. But broke."

"Of course it broke," Omar said wildly, moving on to ransacking the bedding. What if the demon arrived here, now? And only Omar knew to defend them all against it. "Evil can never last, Hil'ki--"

"Golem not _evil_! We have good golem in circus. Clay Woman. Was like -- like Drukk--"

"The cloven-hoofed goat demons," Omar snapped, for now it had come back to him, from his studies, precisely what George was.

"Or Omnion--"

"The huge egg demons of anal penetration--"

"Omar!" Hil'ki cried, stomping his foot. "You _like_ anal pene-tration! And nice Omnion, Mr. Fig Tree, he live right by you! Work for postal service--"

"Of course he does," Omar said ruthlessly, now understanding just why the Praknita postal service was so bad. Of course it was bad. It was infested with demons. Omar now said as much.

"Sirit is not a demon!" Amayi cried out.

Before retreating back into sobs again.

Omar turned around and blinked at him.

"Is Sirit helping you raise these children?" he said. The danger of demons was not immediate, perhaps, but the danger of Amayi's irrationality remained. "Child. You were ensorcelled and raped by a _demon_. Where did you meet him? It would be best to report him to Ladolat at once--"

"Ladolat is the only one who has ever _raped_ me!" Amayi spat. " _He_ is more like a demon than Sirit is! And that -- living only for himself, caring only for pleasure! I know fifty men like that, and a good many D'lani too, and no one calls them demons!"

This with a sneering, miserable glance at his own parent, who was still snoring softly, heedless of the turmoil in his hovel. 

This was hard to argue with. Yet still Omar felt uneasy. He might be led to believe, yes, that the little demon infant was not wicked. Or not wicked yet. But clearly this Sirit was. Amayi lived more miserably than many of his all-too-miserable people, and was subjected to what appeared to be daily rapes to earn his coin. Hil'ki often fretted about him, asking for sleeping draughts for Amayi, salve for Amayi, numbing creams to make the pain of taking cock for the prince's pleasure more bearable. 

Where was this Sirit, then? Offering evil clay spirits to sweep the floors? Clay menaces that broke down, and changed nothing? 

Sirit was no use even if he wasn't pure evil, which clearly he was. It was _Hil'ki_ who was useful and looked after Amayi, the way Hil'ki seemed to look after all of his people. 

Amayi sighed and said, "Sirit is not a bad elf. But he cannot let Ladolat know he has fathered my babies, can he? He is also part of the court, and Ladolat doesn't like to share. He was furious with me for getting pregnant and not birthing a clutch that was his. He saw it as rude. Ladolat hates people who are rude to him. It was all we could do to make him think both my children were D'lani."

Now the salve and paint made sense.

"You dispel the red with the salve," Omar said slowly. "Then -- paint the child green?"

It did not seem healthy. Not remotely. He knew this was only a demon-infant, and yet he frowned at this. He beckoned at Amayi to pass him the baby again.

Amayi did so gingerly, only after a slow nod from Hil'ki. 

Omar was more careful with the child now. It was still just a child. And part of the reason it was so vivid a red was because that paint must not be good for it. The salve had no irritants, but something was irritating the already naturally-crimson skin. It had to be the whore's makeup. Such a thing did not belong on a babe. 

When he shot a look at Hil'ki, he could tell that the little elf knew this. Possibly this was why Hil'ki had brought him here, even. This was a problem even Hil'ki could not solve. 

"Amayi," Omar said slowly. "Who do others think the father is?"

Amayi closed his pretty eyes. His voice was low and thick with heavy emotion.

"The other elves -- they know something is odd. They -- they have accused me of--"

He broke off. He took big gulping breaths, and Arrat was now saying something bitter-sounding and furious in D'lani.

"They think was his _relli_ ," Hil'ki said softly. "Is not normal. But -- but many D'lani not normal, yes? Since D'laniaa lost. D'lani born sick, bad legs. Or weak, like Kalyi. Or Yellikat like me. Or kill selves, because no want to live. Sickness everywhere, from losing D'laniaa. Many think is sickness now in Honors-The-Roots clutch."

"Ladolat thinks it too," Amayi breathed out. "He doesn't mind that explanation. So long as I'm not fucking another member of the court, and especially not his pet D'Salu."

Omar still could not quite believe Ladolat was keeping demons in his court. It was so profane he couldn't fit the thought in his mind, even though he knew that much of Praknita, many corners of the red-walled jewel city, apparently even the _postal service_ , delighted in what Hakash would deem profanity.

"If you simply applied the salve, what happens?" he asked now. "The child is -- brown?"

"Is brown but still has the ears," Amayi said. "Dead giveaway, right? Our stupid elf ears."

And the strange forms, narrow-hipped as youths but round-arsed as the prettiest of night-garden flowers. An elf was an elf and thus unmistakable. And mutilating a creature this small was wicked. He would grow up even more unnatural than a demon. He would grow knowing something about his body was wrong, was off, and that--

Omar thought of Nasir, for a moment. This was not a moment to think of Nasir, for doing so made him feel weak and tight-chested, like he couldn't breathe. But he couldn't help it.

No, they couldn't round the ears. Omar probably _could_ , for it was a simple surgery. But Omar didn't want to. He felt the little weight in his arms for a long moment.

"You have no elf who will pretend to have sired him, to let the sting of this evil rumor die away from your family?" he asked.

"Can use Yorrat," said Hil'ki at once, for this was precisely the kind of thought that was always occurring to Hil'ki, who after all treated his clutchmates and older brothers like extensions of his very will.

But Amayi shook his head.

"And when you all go to Monrovia, Hil'ki, what then? Yorrat becomes _oreyo_ , guilty of abandonment. And they will call him _oreyo_ already for not coming forward. No, I won't have that happen to your brother--"

"It doesn't have to be an elf anyone knows," Omar said now. "It doesn't have to be a real elf at all. Hil'ki saw an elf who was simply the wrong color once, right?"

Amayi rolled his stunningly large eyes. 

"Oh, yes, that was this past summer. Anka. Bird! A blackbird elf, living in Monrovia--"

"Anka," Hil'ki said frostily, over the hoots of Arrat, "was real."

"But he was the wrong color," said Omar. "And Monrovian. Monrovians often visit the court of Ladolat. What if you -- what if you simply let your child be dun brown, and told your people that a visiting Monrovian had introduced you to his own pet? To a new elf--"

Amayi's gaze went sharp and shrewd.

"One who went back to Monrovia before I started to show," he said slowly. "Yes. But if this gets back to Ladolat--"

"Ladolat can believe that you are dying the child with the salve, and that it is to cover for having a babe with your own _relli_ ," Omar decided. "Two lies, and if anyone guesses that you are lying, they will simply have to pick one of the lies to play the part of the truth. But they will not know the _real_ truth--"

No one could know that. This demon child was not the only creature that would suffer. It had a brother that was simply a normal elf, green-tipped like Hil'ki, who was already suffering by association. And Amayi and Arrat were clearly suffering.

Hil'ki clapped his hands now, eyes shining.

"Clever, Omar," he said approvingly. Then, to Amayi, "See? Omar good man. Knew Omar help us."

Omar, who was a drunk, a lech, a failed physician, and now an unwitting ally to a demon, blushed. 

He knew Hil'ki was wrong. But for some reason, for a moment, he felt as though he could for once agree with Hil'ki.

-

After this, Amayi and Arrat became added to the roster of his physicians' assistants. They would walk Howat over to him sometimes, when no one else could look after the elf, and would stay to organize Omar's bedding while Omar treated farmers for boils, sailors for the pox. Sometimes Omar would have three or four elves in his tiny quarters, bustling about and cleaning and organizing. 

He was alarmed at how this meant that, now, slightly _higher_ castes came to knock on his door.

Not princes, priests, or great scholars. Not the people truly running the city, like the clientele of the Master Physician. But a few of the wealthier farmers. And one or two merchants even came to him, eager to see the humble practice of Omar of Hakash, the man who treated the elves. Jungle elves were technically low-caste foreigners, permitted under Ladolat's decrees only to work as hired servants, but then so were the Monrovians, and they were running Praknita quite as much as Ladolat did. And Monrovians were gangly, ugly men with muttonchops and too-tight dress uniforms. Elves were lowly, but graceful and pretty, too. 

Now, when Omar walked through the streets, people whispered of the healing power of the lovely humming songs in his practice. They credited those songs to him, which made no sense, as if he had coaxed them out of the elves. He had not. As Dr. Nenge and Haroun both had noted, that music was just how elves comforted each other, and the elves of Praknita, the elves like Hil'ki -- they comforted each other all the time.

One night, Howat, who adored Hil'ki most of all his clutchmates, trailed his brother to the practice and refused to leave. Hil'ki only rolled his eyes at him and shoved him into the examination corner.

"No peek!" he said. "Howat sleep there. Hil'ki sleep with Omar. Like with Tai'vi and Yann, yes?”

Howat gave an odd, keening hum, but stayed put behind the curtain. Hil’ki picked up Omar’s second blanket — Omar had two blankets now, one knitted for him by Kalyi’s clutchmates, as a gift to thank him for easing that elf’s pain a bit — and tossed It behind the curtain. 

Howat gave a loud sigh, but they watched his lithe shadow stoop, pick it up, wrap himself in it, and then climb up on the table to sleep. 

“Good,” Hil’ki announced. 

Then, as if his brother were not mere feet away, he turned to Omar with his hands on his hips. 

“Hil’ki yours now. What you want today, Omar?” he asked, without preamble. 

Arse, cunt, mouth. As if Omar could pick. As if all three were not perfect. 

Omar sighed, and sat cross-legged on his bedding. 

“I want you in my lap,” he told Hil’ki. 

The little elf beamed at him. And then, like an angel’s enchantment, he was in Omar’s lap. He wound his arms around Omar’s neck and let out a happy hum. 

“What else Omar want?”

Omar thought about it. 

“I want to move to a bigger practice,” he said. “It’s summer soon, and there will be summer illnesses to treat—“

Hil’ki’s hum became contemplative and sad. 

“In Monrovia, will be spring. Will leave before then. Mister Putnam — his first show is first spring day in Monrovia.”

Omar nodded. 

“So you can’t help me move. That’s fine. What if I move, and then the new practice is like a secret I keep for you, for you to see when you come back? When _do_ you come back?”

"After rains," Hil'ki said sadly,

That was four months. Four months without Hil'ki, without the elf that made Omar wake and spend entire days not thinking even once of honey-wine. Omar swallowed, a bit miserable. Hil'ki rested his little golden head on Omar's collarbone, as if to listen to his heart.

"Maybe you'll see that Anka again?" Omar suggested, after they had wallowed in their sadness a bit too long.

Hil'ki gave a little laugh.

"Tell him come home with me! Lovely Anka. Will say, 'Beautiful Anka, come to Irvidni. D'lani live nice there. Have good doctor, Doctor Omar--'"

"I hardly think that's much temptation," Omar said wryly. 

Hil'ki laughed again.

"No, Omar is. Omar so sweet to me. When Hil'ki away, Arrat says will uphold deal, yes? For Omar--"

Omar shook his head, not wanting that.

"I don't want the deal," he told the little elf. "I'll help you for free, Hil'ki. All of you. Or, well. It's hardly for free, is it? Amayi and Arrat do all my cleaning! And yesterday I think one of your distant cousins gave me a basket of lentils. The deal's off. Now, if you like. You can go home now, and I'll still hold up my end for just the cleaning and the occasional lentils."

He'd been thinking of this for some time. And it was easier to come out with it now, when Hil'ki would soon be leaving anyway. When Omar would be losing him for four months anyway. Omar hadn't been able to cut himself off before now, because he was a weak man.

Hil'ki pushed his head back, to look Omar in the eye.

"No want fuck me?" he asked, astonished. "Not even cunt?"

He looked, of all things, almost disappointed. Omar felt as though he'd misstepped.

"No, I do!" he protested. "Haroun help me, it's all I want to do. Do you know I think of you when I walk to the well? Once I almost fell in--"

"Should not be walking to well. Yorrat should be helping with well," Hil'ki muttered, and Omar could see him mentally composing a lecture for the surly Yorrat in his mind's eye. 

"I want to fuck you," Omar said, laughing a bit. "But you don't have to fuck me, yes? I'm yours if you want to. But I know I'm not a handsome man, or even a very smart one. I'm neither wealthy nor pious nor charming. At worst I'm a drunk, and at best just normal--"

"Omar is smart!" Hil'ki insisted. "And handsome and charming! You want -- you want be my--"

He broke off, like he didn't know the word. Or perhaps was afraid to say it. It came out in a whisper.

"My _avva_?"

Omar stared down at him, bemused.

"I don't speak D'lani," he reminded Hil'ki. 

Hil'ki blushed.

" _Avva_ \-- Hil'ki not a good _avva_. Not handsome, yes? Not smart. Not charming--"

Omar frowned at him.

"Very funny. Yes, you are. All of those things."

Hil'ki's little smile, his real smile, came out now. 

"Yes, but am Yellikat. So -- so will not ever have _avva_ , I always think. And do not want D'lani _avva_. Maybe if -- if as beautiful and sweet as Anka! But Anka too beautiful for me. No, for me, would like Omar, yes? Omar to be mine."

Then he surged up. He pressed his mouth to Omar's mouth, demanding a kiss. Omar gave it, feeling his heart crack open and fill with something bright and perfect as sunlight, or prayers. Hil'ki seemed to drive from him the need for all that honey-wine, replacing it with fresh possibility.

"You wait for me, Omar? As _avva_?"

"Yes," Omar promised. "Yes. As your lover, as the one that-- that _loves_ you, Hil'ki--"

From behind the curtain, there came a satisfied hum, rather ruining the moment. Hil'ki whipped his head around.

"Howat!" he said sharply. "Stop listening!"

But Omar was too delighted, too broken into happy pieces to mind. He laughed now, laughed as freely as he had when he'd been just a schoolboy in Hakash, and pulled his elf in close.

"Did I get it right?" he said. "What do I need to do to be a good _avva_ , my love? Besides wait for you, which I promise I'll do faithfully."

Hil'ki hugged him tight.

"New practice -- not so far from elf district, yes? Close. And walls, yes? Between bedroom and rest. Like in palaces. For Hil'ki to fuck you with _privacy_ \--"

Howat sniffed, and Omar just laughed again, laughed and laughed. He supposed they wouldn't be fucking tonight, for while it might work for Tai'vi and Yann, for him blatant voyeurism did very little. So he ended up just holding Hil'ki, kissing the elf over and over, on his pointed ears and his small, lovely mouth. On the green-blushed tips of his nipples, and on his slender shoulders. Wrapping his arms around Hil'ki.

As the D'lani fell asleep, they hummed, and Omar just listened to it, rapt.

Hil'ki blinked drowsy eyes at him.

"Omar no want join?" he whispered, breaking off mid-song.

" _I_ can't hum," Omar whispered.

"Anyone hum," Hil'ki said. "Is song for loved ones. For you, and for my tuo. You hum too, Omar."

He yawned a bit, and then he said something which, to Omar, made perfect sense. Which explained the humming in a way nothing else really had. 

"Hum," Hil'ki repeated sleepily, "Hum, Omar? That just prayer."

-

Summer was long and wet and unbearable, and Omar fought the need to resort to drinking as best he could. 

He broke the night before his move. He had agreed to be evicted from his little hovel-room, something he had been fighting vociferously for months before he'd met Hil'ki. He had secured a newer, bigger set of rooms. A whole ramshackle building closer to the elven district, somehow cheaper than this room by virtue of the supremely poor location. It all should work, of course, which meant that at the eleventh hour he became convinced it would not. That the key to the ramshackle house would not fit its lock. That the Praknita city police would be called on him for carting his meager possessions in a rented rickshaw through the streets. Perhaps he needed a permit he had forgotten to get. He was quite sure he was the sort to forget something big and expensive, like a permit.

He woke with a pounding headache, to the sight of the elves packing up the last of his things for him.

Amayi had a cup of milky tea for him, even. The lovely elf held it out, and Omar thanked him profusely.

"Did you pay for that rickshaw outside?" he asked Omar. "You won't need it, you know. Everyone's excited to move you to your new practice."

The elves even helped him set it up. The new house was built into the sorriest section of the city wall, and accessible from a little winding path from the city's Border Street, or else reachable from the outside of the city, via a set of steps from the elven district. On the higher of its two levels, the level accessible from Praknita itself, were two examination rooms, and a room for patients to sit and wait in, with big windows overlooking a rickety balcony. Amayi made Rel'ouvi, a very tall and broad elf, bar the door to that. Omar didn't think it was safe, and was half-convinced that the potential for liability was one of many reasons the rent was so cheap. There was also a proper kitchen downstairs, opening right onto a dirty courtyard in the elven district. Next to the kitchen was a small, private sleeping room, and a much bigger room. 

Omar was not sure what he would use that for. Or, at least, he was not sure until Amayi said, carefully, "You are serious with what you told Hil'ki, before he left?"

Omar stared at him. Of course Hil'ki had told his best friend of Omar's promise. But Omar was still off-kilter at this, at the knowledge that Amayi knew he'd promised himself to a jungle elf.

And meant it. He nodded.

Amayi sighed.

"Good. You may need to get some partitions, then. For Tai'vi and Yann."

"What?" Omar said.

Amayi pursed his full, lovely lips.

"Doctor," he said patiently. "You pledged to be Hil'ki's _avva_. And we elves, surely you've noticed that we live with our families just as you men do, once we wed. We live in _extended_ families, Doctor Omar."

-

He did get the partitions in. It was rather a rushed job. Tai'vi elected to oversee the whole thing, with many pretty, sighing hints about how he and his Yann would need to be here by the window to the courtyard, so he could plant his Yann some lemon trees. Tai'vi's clutch -- a clutch of six other beautiful young elflings -- all profusely agreed, and so did Tai'vi's relli, and so did Tai'vi's relli's avva. This was Uoleyi, a broad-shouldered D'lani, the oldest and tallest elf Omar had ever seen, taller even than Omar. He was a cousin to the Guards-the-Branches (everyone was cousin to Guards-the-Branches, somehow) and had sired Tai'vi. He gave Omar a stern talking to about the importance of being sire-in-charge.

"Never argue with the children's relli, yes? Never. Must always help the relli."

Omar stared at him.

"Tai'vi," he guessed.

Hil'ki could not be relli. Relli meant mother, he thought. Hil'ki could not be a mother.

Uoleyi looked at Omar as if he feared the community physician was a very, very stupid man. 

"Your relli," he said impatiently. "Yes? You pick Hil'ki."

"Hil'ki can't -- that is. He's a Yellikat. He won't be able to--"

"You still pick him as your relli," said Uoleyi sharply. "Yes? We to have ceremony for you, yes? Or you will back out?"

"No," Omar stammered out. "Haroun defend me, I would _never_ \-- that is, I gave my _word_ \--"

"Very good," said Uoleyi. "So what is problem? Yes, you never have clutch. But you still treat him like he is relli, yes? As good?"

Omar nodded at once.

Uoleyi relaxed a bit. He put a broad, powerful hand on Omar's shoulder.

"Good," he said. "Hil'ki -- very good elf. All us love Hil'ki. Worried for him. Knew he could not wed D'lani, yes? But found something better."

"Yes. A recovering man," Omar breathed out. "Completely in recovery. I swear to you."

He knew that all the elves had been able to smell honey-wine on his breath, on moving day. They were just too polite to say anything.

Uoleyi gave him that eyeballing, unimpressed stare again.

"No," he said slowly. "A _doctor_ , Doctor Omar."

-

Though no, Omar had not ever explicitly agreed to a wedding ceremony, at the end of the rainy season, two days after he went to the railway to greet the performers of A.P. Putnam's Magnificent Circus, a wedding was precisely what happened.

He was only pleased to be with Hil'ki again. His Hil'ki. He dared now to think of the elf like that. And he'd half-convinced himself, all these long months past, that Hil'ki must have been the one to propose the wedding.

But Hil'ki was just as shocked as he was when it actually happened. He was trembling a bit when they were tied back to back in the largest of the elven brick-hovels. Uoleyi's. That august older elf would preside over the ceremony. Surly Yorrat and excited Hennat stalked before Omar, to demand that he pledge his fealty to the Guards-The-Branches. There was no one to appear on Omar's behalf, so Amayi had offered his relli -- bleary-eyed and sober for once -- to stand in for him and quiz Hil'ki.

"Omar?" Hil'ki whispered, low enough for only the apprentice physician to hear, despite all the crowd packed into the boiling-hot hovel.

"Yes?" Omar managed.

He was sweating profusely. He was probably sweating onto Hil'ki. He made a poor bridegroom, and hated himself a bit.

"You want this? Really? You no want, Omar, we stop--"

"I want this," Omar said firmly, and was surprised to find that it was true. "Do you? We can also stop if you don't."

There was a pause. Omar was surprised at the way Hil'ki's voice wavered, as if he was crying a bit.

"Omar -- _Omar_ ," the little elf said, a bit wildly. "This -- this never something Hil'ki dream be for him. This _all_ I want, Omar."

After that, there was a lot of quizzing, and pledging, and for some reason Yorrat lit a torch and stuck it in Omar's face, which was the last thing Omar needed in a place as hot as Uoleyi's one-room hovel.

But it didn't matter. Those vows they had whispered to each other -- those were enough. And that night, Hil'ki was in Omar's bed in Omar's little, private room, not in exchange for anything, but because Hil'ki wanted to be.

"All yours, Omar," he reminded the apprentice physician, spreading his legs with a little laugh.

And this time -- this time this was true.


	5. New Practices

Omar, who had never in his life thought to wed, discovered that being married suited him. 

Even if he found himself married not just to Hil'ki but also to Hil'ki's family. Chatty, silly Hennat and silent, odd Howat. Flirtatious Tai'vi and surly Yorrat. Frugal, practical Haalki and bold, spendthrift Yann. All were crammed into the four bottom rooms of the ramshackle house, and it should have been a tight fit except that after the alleyside practice and the brick hovels, no one complained. Howat made a little nest for himself in a corner of the kitchen, far away from the others, but that was just Howat. Haalki kept his neat bedding as far away as possible from Hennat's messy bedding, but then that was Haalki and Hennat. Tai'vi did in fact plant lemon trees, and forgot to care for them, so they died. But then Yann went out in the night, quietly removed the dead trees, and replaced them with live ones for his lover.

There were, of course, arguments. So many arguments. Omar had been raised in a hushed, reverent Hakash household, where purposeless aggression was a moral failing. So until now he had never heard so many arguments. Arguments over spoons and socks and lovers, and ten thousand other things. Hil'ki was the natural arbiter of all of these, by virtue of simply having the strongest personality in the family. He mediated between uptight Haalki and freewheeling Yann, sensitive Hennat and implacable Yorrat. 

Sometimes the elves appealed to Omar, which was never an effective strategy, as Omar understood himself to have absolutely no authority over their lives. He was just the doctor. He saw patients upstairs, and put aside the money for the rent, and very carefully did not spend any on honey-wine. Of nights, he existed to please Hil'ki, who took charge of the household accounts, still worked at perhaps five of his many millions of jobs, and was forever running out to other elves' homes to make sure they had bedding for their babies and lentils for their cooking pots.

Then Hennat might come up to Omar, who would be bandaging a young human boy upstairs, or checking a laborer-wife's temperature, and quietly wait by his little office corner.

Tai'vi might come too. It was worse when Tai'vi came too.

"Omar!" one or the other would call out, sing-song, as soon as Omar was done and the patient was seen off at the doorway.

"Yes?" Omar would say nervously.

"This _my_ hair-comb, Omar, yes? Yann give me, Omar, yes? See, is _blue_ hair comb, Omar--"

"Is _my_ blue hair comb from Torrat, Omar!"

"No, is _mine_!"

"What does Hil'ki say?" Omar would say desperately, remembering Uoleyi's advice.

He would watch one or both young elves' eyes narrow with hitherto-unrevealed reserves of cunning.

"Hil'ki will know if you lie about his opinions!" Omar would stammer out. "I tell Hil'ki everything!"

The cunning would bleed away. In its place would be sulkiness, but that was fine. Omar could deal with sulkiness.

"We wait for him," Hennat or Tai'vi would mutter, and then one or both would slink away. And if they were clever they would resolve it themselves, for Hil'ki was the sort to resolve it by going, "You two no need hair-comb. You know who need hair-comb? Kalyi's clutchmate, yes? Is in mourning. Give to me. I bring to Kalyi's clutchmate now."

The one argument Hil'ki could not or would not resolve was, predictably, the one he and Omar were determined not to have. This was the argument about Hil'ki's occupation.

He no longer worked in the palace, which after all paid so little. Instead he was a general nurse for Omar, the smiling, humming, pretty face that drew even wealthy merchants out to this curious practice to catch a glimpse of the assistant physician's pet D'lani bride. This more than doubled Omar's earnings, and made Omar of Hakash, apprentice physician, a relatively well-known doctor by reputation, even if not a doctor in fact. He was a man so clever, the people of Praknita whispered, that he tended his elves for free, and in exchange the elves offered his human patients their healing songs.

Or at least this was what Hil'ki, pretty and smiling, always managed to convey when he was about his nursing duties. 

Busy, fulsome nursing duties, if his husband had anything to say about it. For Omar, he was of Hakash. And he did not want his bride sucking off scholars for Irvidni lessons, or tit-fucking men to post letters or advance his cousins. He made Hil'ki agree to take some books Omar bought him and try to teach his people how to speak Irvidni and advance themselves, which was much more economical. On Rice-Day nights, Omar's house filled to the brim with elves eager to learn Irvidni, including Hil'ki, who sought to improve his own, and Omar ended up carefully teaching them all, as he had been taught in Hakash.

Hil'ki no longer even fucked merchants. There was no need to. Merchants came right to them, for headache-cures or bruise-poultices. Hil'ki was as cunning as his family, and knew how to make these men's scattered moments with their elfin nurse valuable to all the elves, how to spot a man who might spend sixty-three Irvidni rudins on a bolt of elven weaving and not bat an eye. 

But he and Omar could not, would not, come to an agreement on the matter of employment by the lecherous, drug-addled scam artist, Arthur P. Putnam.

It was very lucrative employment, yes. It meant that their household was very nearly prosperous, or prosperous enough for the slums, and that Hil'ki had plenty left over to supplement the coffers of many a poorer elf, of those elves who could not support themselves, who were sick or pregnant or alone in their hovels.

But Omar did not like it.

Hil'ki seemed to sense that. So he would simply offer Omar some of his considerable earnings each River-Day. He would make sure to stress that he no longer rested in Mister Putnam's rooms, but came home straight to Omar. He would remind Omar, with forced brightness, that this was the great benefit to a Yellikat -- he could not get pregnant by any of those men, yes, Omar? A dead branch not bear blooms, yes, Omar? 

(Omar would hear: "Mister Putnam say hello, Omar. Say you like his poppy, yes, and his whore, Omar. Always you like that, Omar. You drunk and dirty too, Omar, and you use me too." 

Even though Hil'ki would not say it.)

Omar would only say, "Here. Drink this. It's to forestall pox. I suppose it's a good thing you're not going to work for him this summer, anyway."

This was not an argument. Omar thought he was an easy husband to have, most of the time, but even he could hear that he presented this to Hil'ki the same way Amayi had slipped in the fact of their sharing house, Uoleyi had made clear that Omar was to marry Hil'ki and support him in all things. This was not up for discussion. This would simply be the thing that was happening, and that was that. 

Hil'ki, amazingly, did not fight this. He began quietly training Tai'vi to take his place in Putnam's circus shows for the coming summer. Omar would go to his office window and watch Hil'ki and Tai'vi practicing acrobatic leaps in the courtyard, and would feel utter relief at the sight.

No need to argue. They would resolve things without misplaced aggression, hard feelings. They were already doing it. Hil'ki was enormously easy to be married to. He suited Omar beautifully. He always had. When Omar was uncertain, he made sensible decisions for the doctor, when Omar was low, he came and sat in his lap to cheer him up. He did not mind when Omar prayed, which Omar always did awkwardly and a little shamefacedly, for Omar knew he had abandoned any true worship of the God of men and that, in Hakash, he would be considered very low for this. 

Hil'ki never made him feel low. He just kneeled solemnly next to Omar and rubbed his back, humming Omar to soothe him. 

He also put money aside for Omar, out of the money Omar put aside for him, and when a famed Monrovian bookseller opened a new store in the Scholars' District, Hil'ki went and secretly bought Omar the collected catalogues of Haroun; the medical texts of Doctor Azu Nenge; and even a slim, new volume by Nenge's son, a learned doctor in his own right. Omar haltingly let Hil'ki talk him into writing to that great eminence, sharing some of his notes on the D'lani. They paid an exorbitant amount to have the letter sent via Monrovian railway-mail, for even Hil'ki, who was friendly with Mr. Fig Tree the postman, had to admit that the Praknita post was not much use.

Omar was pleased and astonished when Doctor Clement Nenge wrote back. He had of course disclosed to the great physician that he, Omar, was merely an apprentice. But the younger Doctor Nenge did not seem to care about that, not any more than the elves did.

The very least Omar could do for all of this was try to learn D'lani, and in this Hil'ki was invaluable, kind, and supremely patient. D'lani was a much harder tongue than Irvidni, Baruem, or even Monrovian. Omar, who relied heavily upon the written word in learning languages, initially found it nigh-impossible to learn the elves' tongue, for D'lani had carvings and symbols and weavings and songs, but no writing. But every night Hil'ki would take up the lessons, never cruel when Omar botched grammar or forgot key vocabulary.

"You have my rellat, Omar, yes? Remember rellat?"

Omar did not. Omar, big hands holding up Hil'ki's perfect thighs, mouth absorbed in licking Hil'ki's perfect pucker, would pause and say, "Er. That's your cousin. Right? Wait. Why do I have your cousin Rellat? I'm confused now."

Hil'ki would sigh.

"Well, yes. Rellat is my cousin. Not know _why_ they named him that. Is not normal name for D'lani. But means -- means _heart_ , yes, Omar? Remember? Rellat d'leei o' ta'k ora Omar, yes?"

"Your heart," Omar would translate slowly, "is held...in the feet? No. Obviously not feet, sorry. Hands. In the hands...of me?"

He could practically hear Hil'ki's smile. He put down Hil'ki's thighs and stretched himself over the elf, so he could see the smile too. Little, private, and true. Omar stroked his cheek and Hil'ki moved into the touch, content.

"It doesn't seem real," Omar confessed. "I--I would not be considered fit to hold anyone's heart in Hakash, Hil'ki--"

Hil'ki met his eyes fiercely.

"Why not fit?" he demanded. "Omar is good man, yes?"

Omar nodded, despite not really believing that. Hil'ki gathered up his hand, such an ungainly, large hand, and pressed a kiss to it. Omar imagined that it really was a kiss to transfer his heart to Omar's grasp, and nearly had a heart attack at the thought of having to physically hold something so valuable.

-

His D'lani, though so very pathetic, improved. And Hil'ki, with a live-in Irvidni tutor, soon mastered Irvidni and moved on seamlessly to Baruem. And so between them they had the perfect pleasure, a scholar's pleasure, of conversing in not one but three languages, and thus keeping any number of puns and jokes between them, even despite the many other elves in the house. They had, Omar thought, their own language, a private language of just their marriage. Possibly Howat was able to grasp some of this hybrid Irvid-d'lani-baruem, for Omar thought Howat was much smarter than his siblings gave him credit for. But Howat did not speak, so he could not intrude on the marital language. 

Amayi perhaps could, for he was trained as a bed servant to understand a plethora of tongues, as Ladolat liked to offer his bed servants to his guests. But Amayi, too, let Omar and Hil'ki have their private jokes. The wry, lovely D'lani was friendly to Omar now that the rumors swirling around his children had died down, and he often brought Youvi, the normal child, and Yaleyi, the demon, to the ramshackle house. Hil'ki spoiled and adored them as his own, and Howat became rather good at watching them.

Omar, he simply marveled at how the demon-infant could be so _normal_. There were never any signs of shapeshifting or evil. Yaleyi seemed a perfectly sweet and healthy elven baby, despite the layers of wicked misery surrounding his conception, gestation, and birth. 

Amayi's visits soon revealed to Omar a way, however, to further remove this child -- and his brother, and most of all his battered mother -- from the clear cruelty and wickedness that must infest Ladolat's court.

As the chosen avva of their household's foremost relli, Omar was indeed the ramshackle house's sire-in-charge. This meant that, when Hennat and Haalki had their heats, it was he who the interested elf-men approached.

Heat-time was, Omar learned, incredibly stressful. Even when Tai'vi had heats -- and Tai'vi was so fertile he had heats over just about anything -- the lower level of the house would fill with needy, desperate cries. It was always humid in Praknita, so smells carried easily, and the strange sickly-sweet smell of the affected elf would sometimes waft up to the medical practice, where, thankfully, the humans had no idea what it was, and would mistake it for perfume. But it was not perfume. 

For Tai'vi, heats were easily dispelled through the tender, lusty attentions of Yann, who never failed to plow his beloved with such gusto that Omar was heartily grateful he'd partitioned off a private room for them. But Hennat and Haalki had no lover-in-residence. They were unattached young elves, and when they fell into heat they were twice as pitiable and desperate as Tai'vi, faces flushed, hips writhing, the heavy scent of their wet cunts impossible to escape.

Elves could apparently smell that for miles, despite not having very good senses of smell otherwise. Doctor Clement Nenge, Omar, and Hil'ki had a number of theories about how this could be possible. But Omar didn't have much time to test the theories. He would be woken by Hennat or Haalki's sobbing, and by the time he had managed to shrug on a robe at least, he would find the courtyard full of interested, respectful elves, all petitioning him in D'lani for the right to enter his home, if it pleased his chosen relli, to attend to his chosen relli's clutchmate.

Omar would be treated to quick, perfect recitations of how the Sings-to-the-Twigs clutch was already a steadfast ally and relation of the Guards-the-Branches. Would hear of how an elf's _kelli_ \-- which was one's beloved in the sense of a beloved blood relation, like a clutchmate, or a child -- was an elf of great renown, and thus the clutch-line was a good one to mingle with, should the affected elf choose to wed into it. Would hear, too, of how each elf planned to be a good _avva_ , or beloved in the sense of romantic partner and spouse, and the many ways they would maintain a good nest for Hennat or Haalki. To say that the elf-men clamored to be the ones to treat the heat was incorrect. They were always unfailingly calm, talking over each other in such a polite way as to nearly convince Omar that they were not in competition at all. But even so. They were insistent. To the D'lani, to capture the attention of a pretty young one was something serious. Omar hardly felt equipped to judge between them, to understand what was a valuable fact Hennat or Haalki would appreciate, and what was merely a man's brag in order to net himself a fertile spouse. 

Yorrat, however, was a natural at this kind of thing. Yorrat was an excellent sire. He liked Omar the least of all Omar's new relations -- Omar was fairly sure the broad-shouldered man-elf had never once offered him even a smile -- but he came to Omar's rescue every time his siblings fell into heat. He had a brusque, no-nonsense way of approaching every suitor.

"You no have job, Ren'ki. Handsome yes, but Haalki want hard worker, yes? No good. And you -- Duleyi. You unfaithful elf! Last week you courting Kou'ki. No, no. My brother need faithful elf. Away!"

This sort of dismissive pride did not offend anyone. Indeed, even the spurned elf men seemed to consider it wholly appropriate that Yorrat should be protective. Protective enough to cull a crowd of thirty elves down to a clear and evident two or three winners, who were then ushered inside so the confused, sick little elfling could make the final choice. 

Yorrat could have done this all in D'lani, and forced Omar out of the sire-in-charge process entirely. But instead he worked in as much of his halting Irvidni as he and the other elves could manage, and thus Omar realized that Yorrat might not like him, but he wanted Omar to be _good_ at this. He wanted Omar to do his duty to Yorrat's family properly.

"You've taught me a great deal," Omar told him one day, when he tagged along on Yorrat's daily well-trip, not just to assist the elf but to thank him.

Yorrat grunted. 

"I'm aware I'm not your first choice for Hil'ki--"

"What choice for Hil'ki?" Yorrat snapped. "D'lani treat Hil'ki like pet bird, yes? He fetch for us. He work for us. But he Yellikat, so not allowed in nest. But he good brother. More than brother. Relli killed by Monrovians, so then Hil'ki, he make himself our new relli. Relli to everyone, Hil'ki. He want you, fine. Yorrat not care either way."

Omar thought Yorrat did care, and care quite a bit. And he was disturbed, as he always was, by the casual mention of their mother's murder, of Monrovia's complete domination of D'laniaa. This was a wound so painful that even Hil'ki only ever alluded to it, though it seemed to be a wound shared by every jungle elf in Praknita. 

But this conversation was not about that. This was about thanking Yorrat.

"You would make a great _avva_ ," Omar said carefully. "I know Hil'ki thinks so. But you don't put yourself forward--"

Yorrat only grunted again.

"Amayi not want _avva_ , yes? And Yorrat not want other elf. Only Amayi. Hil'ki know that."

"He does?" said Omar, shocked.

Evidently Hil'ki did. Though Omar was from that moment a fervent partisan of the potential union between Amayi, who clearly required a strong, good, non-demonic elf to take charge of his crumbling household; and Yorrat, who was evidently in love with Amayi, and also basically a surly waste within Omar's own household; Hil'ki, it must be said, did not agree. Omar took every single opportunity to thrust the visiting Amayi upon the quiet, glowering Yorrat. Hil'ki noticed, and lodged several objections.

"Omar," he said one night, when he was fully impaled on Omar's cock and thus had several advantages over his spouse, the chief one being that Omar was moaning his head off at the incomparable pleasure of how that sweet cunt clenched around him.

"Yes, my Omar," Hil'ki crooned. Clenching and clenching. Omar tried to reach for his little cocklet, for that was their way, yes? Omar had to offer Hil'ki some pleasure, to thank him for the gift of this perfectly tight cunt.

Hil'ki batted his hands away. 

"No, my Omar. This is all for you, my Omar," he said, in his accented but quite-improved Irvidni. He lifted himself off of Omar's cock, leaning forwards to kiss Omar with the seamless grace of a natural acrobat. Omar felt his cock leave that pretty cunt, the head popping out with a carnal squelch that quite embarrassed the assistant physician. His Hil'ki was all loveliness, all elegance, and Omar was simply a huge, black-haired and rather plain man, whose needy cock could only strain and beg for the vise of Hil'ki's cunt again.

Hil'ki pressed kisses to his face.

"More of my cunt, my Omar?"

"Yes," Omar begged. "Yes, please--"

"Mmmm," Hil'ki agreed. His lithe hands found one of Omar's nipples. Rubbed it, and played with the black down on Omar's pectoral. "Soon. But Omar. Tell me. What is this you are trying with my Yorrat and my Amayi?"

"What?" Omar asked blankly. Hil'ki's Irvidni was so good now that it sometimes caught him off guard, as if now it was a weapon the small D'lani could unsheath at a whim.

Also, Omar's cock was so hard he thought he would die. Hil'ki pinched his nipple and it only made him harder, the pain emphasizing the stark need he felt to bury himself in his spouse.

"Amayi doesn't like Yorrat like that. He never has. Yorrat must accept that. He needs to move on from Amayi--"

At _on_ there was another nipple tweak, which left Omar stammering.

"Amayi clearly needs help, my love. He's given his heart to a demon--"

"Omar, you gave your heart to a bare branch. People have the right to give their hearts to whoever they like," Hil'ki snapped. He settled back, but rather than sinking onto Omar's cock again, he simply sat on Omar's hips and left that sad, ugly member unattended and desperate.

"I offered Yorrat to Amayi once, remember? And he was right to reject it. For he does not love Yorrat. So I will not have you trying to manipulate Amayi for Yorrat's benefit. Yorrat can speak for himself, and be turned down, and take it like a good elf," Hil'ki said crossly. "Yes? And do not think I don't know you wish Yorrat had his own household. He may not be easy to live with, but he is my brother, and he will simply have to stay here until his mind matures as his body has and he stops pretending he can force Amayi to love him."

Omar blinked at him. All this well-reasoned chastising was rather a lot to take, when seconds ago he'd been drunk on the promise of coming inside Hil'ki's pretty cunt. 

"Y-yes, love," he settled for saying, feeling somewhat played, but also wanting a simple way out of this spat. A simple way out, and then Hil'ki fucking himself on Omar's cock again. 

Hil'ki pressed a kiss to his brow.

"Thank you, my Omar. I know you mean well. Now, will you give me your cum, my Omar? Swell my belly, just for tonight? Please, my love. I want it."

And then he was fucking down again, with a little moan as his cunt stretched around the big cock. It was so large it was visible through his tight brown stomach. Hil'ki massaged the outline there, breathing out hard.

"I am grateful to you, my Omar," he said quietly, reverently, and when Omar came inside him he clenched and clenched, and hummed a bit, though Omar could not tell, precisely, what he was praying about.

-

Summer came and went, and Hil'ki did not go with the others. They had the house to themselves. The medical practice was thus understaffed at the busiest of times, and Omar had the pleasure of seeing Hil'ki, of his own volition, drop out of his River-Day brothel work to better assist Omar with patients.

The practice continued to grow. Omar of Hakash was now a well-respected name in many districts of Praknita. Omar who had wedded a jungle elf, and who was probably a very clever, good, and patient man, to coax that wild green foreigner to play nurse for him. Omar and Hil'ki would walk to the city parks some days, and Omar would have the distinct honor of men bowing respectfully to him. Admiringly. He might be only an apprentice physician, and an iconoclast who freely touched the lower castes. But did he not have, on his arm, a spirit of pleasure, captured for his benefit? He was like the men Haroun had written of, who went out to the deserts to try and bottle the angels in the middle of their starlight-dances. Only, unlike those men, Omar had not chased after an unlikely dream. Omar had succeeded in an unlikely dream. It was right here, on his arm.

Every night that summer was a delight. When they closed up the medical practice, and once Hil'ki had done his rounds of the elven district to ensure his people were doing well, they had the house to themselves. So long as there wasn't a frantic knock from Rouvi-who-needed-a-poultice or Torrat-whose-cousin-did-not-want-this-clutch, they could spend the night wrapped in each other. Omar took to asking Hil'ki what he wanted now.

"In your arse or cunt, love? Or my mouth on your cock? I am yours."

"Omar!" Hil'ki would laugh, and look shocked for some reason. "You know no one tells elves that, right, my love? No man. We're supposed to be here for _your_ pleasure--"

"I could only look at you, and be pleased," Omar would say, for this was perfectly true. "So let me be here for you. Shall I suck your cock?"

Hil'ki loved having his cocklet sucked. Omar could prop him up anywhere -- on the kitchen table, on his desk upstairs -- and suckle that little member, and his Hil'ki would be left panting and wailing, thin hands fisting in Omar's dark hair. Someday, Omar knew, Hil'ki would have his pre-dinkala, his elven maturation. Then he would be an adult elf, with a cock to rival that of big Yann or Yorrat. Omar supposed he would have to get used to sucking this little one, so that he would not fail that big one. He had never before admitted to himself his interest in cock, but now he was excited for the change that would someday come on his spouse.

Hil'ki's womb was barren. But this did not mean he would be infertile in _all_ ways. And by now Omar knew that when his spouse prayed, it was because something for Hil'ki was missing. 

Some of the elf-households had three spouses at once. An avva, a very young relli, and one in the middle. One who had sired and borne. Hil'ki could not bear, but Omar suspected, and Clement Nenge had privately agreed, that someday an elf like Hil'ki could still probably sire, for the physical process for that was rather more straightforward. And so -- so perhaps, perfect as this union between them was -- perhaps someday they could make it more perfect still. 

For Hil'ki. Omar was perfectly happy now, especially since now they had the house to themselves.

But the only eternal paradise was the paradise of the angels. Haroun had written that, and it was true. So, when summer ended, they went to the railway to welcome back the whole family. Howat was the first one off the train, flying to his brother excitedly and then standing eagerly, awkwardly near Hil'ki and Omar, pressing his clasped hands to his face, while the others disembarked.

This was typical Howat, which of course was not typical at all. He did not speak, and could not court, and slept in the kitchen. He used his sticky elf-sap to climb to the rickety balcony, as if he were climbing a jungle tree, and from there gazed at the waters of the Praknita bay, sometimes pointing out and shouting for things no one else could see. This was simply -- Howat.

Omar hadn't thought _he_ would have a heat.

But he did. One morning, a few weeks after the others returned, it was Howat who woke writhing. No one noticed at first, because Howat didn't cry as the others did. He just sat miserable in the kitchen, until the smell was so obvious that Tai'vi was distressedly checking the courtyard to see if perhaps an abandoned elf had been left on the doctor's doorstep.

Howat cried silently when they found him. He was trying to fuck into his cunt with his own fingers, too roughly, and Yann had to pin his hands to his sides. Haalki ran for cool water, for Omar was worried about how hot and dazed he was. Too hot. Elves should be hot, but not like this. For Howat, the heat was a special agony, for what suitor would want to lie with him? 

A few gathered in the courtyard, but almost all dispersed when they learned that this was Howat in heat. Only the very desperate remained, and Yorrat dispensed with those. 

Howat actually cried louder when he spied them walking away. Omar felt a horrible uncertainty. Surely Howat could not mate. It could not be permitted. Howat did not seem capable of being anything like a mate. His flaws were not surmountable, like Hil'ki's were. He was a permanent innocent, and anyone who might want to fuck him was, to Omar's mind, precisely the sort of person who should not do so. 

Howat burned and cried and suffered for eight horrible nights. No one treated him. He was held down and bathed by Omar and his brothers, always at least two of them staying with him at a time. The last night, Omar held him and Hil'ki bathed him, and Howat looked at them as if he hated them. As if they were betraying him, somehow.

But the heat then passed. He fell asleep as the sun rose over the bay, dropped out of consciousness almost at once. Omar bundled him up and delivered him to Yann and Tai'vi's room for their shift watching him. Then he stumbled back to his own room.

Hil'ki had shadows under his eyes to match Omar's. He was sitting in their bed and crying a bit.

"This was better than his last heat," was all he would say. "I think that drink you gave him, Omar--"

"Almonds, cold milk, and herbs," Omar said, for it hadn't been anything like real medicine. Just something to keep Howat fed and cooled a bit, which was all he'd been able to do. 

"--I think it helped, though," Hil'ki said.

He held out his arms. Omar practically fell into them. Though they were exhausted, Hil'ki still pressed kisses to his ears, and pulled down the band of Omar's trousers.

When he fucked Hil'ki that morning, it was slow and quiet. Hil'ki guided Omar to his arse, and took the rocking thrusts with deep breaths. Little hums. He held Omar very tight and rubbed his hair, and when he came between their bellies, Omar kissed him. Kissed the tear-tracks on his face. 

Omar was his spouse, and could kiss him now. Omar was grateful for that.

They slept half the day, wrapped around each other. When they woke, Howat was still sleeping, but Tai'vi had kindly fixed them some bread and lentil soup, and they breakfasted on that before going upstairs to open up the practice. Generally, by this time, there was a line of patients in the street.

But now when Omar opened the Praknita door, it was not to find patients. Instead, a man on a horse stared down at him. It was a fine white horse, of the shaggy sort bred near Hakash. The man had the uniform of the eleventh Hakash infantry, answerable to the great empire-capitol of Monrovia, and wore plumes in his hat, though wound around his wrist was a prayer-band of the sorts Omar had grown up wearing. He was so tanned, brown as Hil'ki, that it took Omar a few moments to recognize him.

"F-Faiz?" he stammered out.

His brother swung down from his horse. 

"It _is_ you! I had not been able to make myself believe it! They said you got married? To an elf?"

Omar was distantly, vaguely aware that Hil'ki was standing right behind him in the doorway. The elf came forward now, from under Omar's arm.

"Omar?" he demanded, in Baruem for the evident benefit of Faiz. "Who is this?"

Faiz blinked at him.

"I'm Corporal Faiz Barakat of Hakash, elf. I'm Omar's brother."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gotta love when your in-laws just show up and it’s like wait what the fuck I didn’t even know I _had_ in-laws.


	6. Faiz and Nasir

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings for transphobia and misgendering in this chapter! I don’t condone it — I just tend to write fucked up societies, and it’s Hakash’s turn to be fucked up.
> 
> EDIT: Also, as a reader pointed out, this chapter makes it clear that Omar has been deadnaming someone for many chapters, and shows little inclination to change. It may be the chapter where readers stop liking Omar and have to opt out of the fic completely, and I get that. It also seems to suggest that a trans person's violent death has led to Omar's manpain, which...isn't actually what happens in the fic, but to the extent to which you need to stay away from even the suggestion of that, I also completely get opting out of the story at this point.

"Asma and Dariya are married as well now, of course," Faiz reported, as he cheerfully ate some of the lentil soup Tai'vi had made. "You will not believe who married Asma. Guess!"

"I won't guess," Omar said. He was quite sure he didn't remember half the people he'd grown up with, and the other half were probably people he didn't want to remember. "Please just tell me."

Faiz took no offense. He slapped the table as he gave the answer.

"Husnan! No-hair Husnan she used to call him, remember? He was balding at thirteen! He used to try and beg you for medical remedies for it--"

"Ah, yes. That guy," Omar said. 

He dared to sneak a glance at Hil'ki. Hil'ki looked blank and composed. He tapped his own spoon against the side of his soup bowl, to make a little melody that filled up every corner of the kitchen and that did not sound remotely pleased.

"Today I've come to learn that Omar has a great community in Hakash," he said evenly. "You, Corporal Faiz. Two sisters--"

"And Mother," Faiz added.

"Oh?" 

Hil'ki's face was still blank. 

"There is a _mother_ too, how nice--"

"Er," Omar said, realizing belatedly that a mother, two sisters, one hairless brother-in-law, and a Monrovian-army-soldier brother were all things he perhaps should have told Hil'ki about at some point. If not before the marriage, then maybe in the year or so after it. 

"We can talk about that later," he said now, hurriedly. "Faiz, why are you here?"

Faiz put down his lentil spoon.

"I heard you lost your apprenticeship!"

"I lost my apprenticeship over two years ago," Omar pointed out.

Faiz's expressive face, slimmer and a bit more handsome than Omar's, reddened.

"Yes," he said. "I know. But I have not been a good brother to you, Omar--"

"You are the younger. There is no need for you to look after my interests--"

 _Please_ , Omar thought. _let him not mention Nasir. Please let him not mention Nasir._

"Do not be stupid!" Faiz said roundly. "A brother is a brother, Omar. I would have come at once to deal with this arrogant master physician, you know I would have. But it took so long for the letter to reach me -- what _is_ happening with your postal service here, by the way? 

"Though, well, I was fighting clay demons in the Rojnari pass, so perhaps it was difficult to get any news. And then, well--"

He looked sheepish.

"Well, if you must know, I offended my commanding officer. So we were in the same boat around the same time. You sent down by the Master Physician. And me sent _up_. He stripped me of my saber and demoted me to secretary, and then I had to leave Rojnari for the Norderlands."

"The Norderlands?" Omar said. Hil'ki said it too. The name was strange on their tongues. Strange and exotic.

"A place even Haroun never catalogued," Faiz said. "The home of the dog-demons. The Wrollves, who roam the world seducing women, for even they can't bear to live up there. I was supposed to die of cold there. Most men die of cold there. It is a freezing pit of a place, even colder and often darker than the Rojnari. In the Norderlands, the sun never sets in the summer and never rises in the winter--"

"Like the tenth hell described in the books of the prophets," Omar said, horrified. 

The second-worst hell, second only to the hell of false light.

"Yes," Faiz said simply. "I was quite certain I would not survive. But I'm good with numbers. You know that. I made a very able secretary. More able than the Monrovians. So John -- that is, Lord Taverner--"

"The Monrovian commander-general?" Hil'ki cut in, astonished.

Faiz nodded.

"The same! A strange, wise little man. Not like the other Monrovians. He promoted me to personal secretary, for he liked my ideas for fighting the Wrollves. Then, when our battles with the demons were over, he left me to negotiate a few particulars with them. They are reasonable negotiators, for demons. Nothing like the mad sand-and-clay demons that we deal with in the Rojnari. And they trusted a non-Monrovian more than any Monrovian, for they are not stupid. Well, I was there for nearly two years, until I could collect my saber again and demand to be transferred back home. Lord Taverner has been pleased with my work, you see. He stripped that wily Monrovian devil of a commanding officer I had and gave me _his_ job, and now I am the corporal in command of all Hakash!"

Faiz sat back and smiled. Probably because Omar was goggling at him in shock. Hil'ki was too.

"But I am only a cog in the great tapestry of Lord Taverner's fame," Faiz then added, mixing metaphors in his modesty. "While you, Omar, you have achieved fame by your own reckoning. Praknita's beloved elf-charmer physician! You are like a folk tale here. You have not needed my help at all to make the Master Physician regret his arrogance and cruelty to you. There seems to be no doctor in this city who the people trust more than you, my brother!"

This was, of course, precisely the kind of thing Omar occasionally had bright, beautiful revenge fantasies about. But now to hear that it was the case -- that people were talking about him so much that even his _brother_ could track him down --

"Er," Omar said. "I'm sure that's quite exaggerated. But thank you."

"What is exaggerated is the condition of your practice," Faiz said, leaning forward. "I had thought it was a place to please Haroun. Clean and bright and open to all, the home of a truly just physician of Hakash. But you are in this horrible house on the edge of town! And if you climb the wall, brother, you can see that you back out onto the foulest slum imaginable. I took a look this morning. I have never seen such a fetid, miserable place. You must leave it at once. Those unfortunate slum-dwellers will only bring the name of your practice down."

"That," Hil'ki said now, going green and plainly offended, "is the elf district, you U'kannat!"

Omar was not sure what U'kannat meant. It was not a word Hil'ki used often. But Faiz gave a wide, pleased smile at it.

"Ah, yes! Your elf-chatter is so musical. And I think I know this word. It means: 'tall, virile human man,' right?"

"Something like that," Hil'ki muttered, after a moment to calm himself. He spoke in just the tones Omar had used to convince Arthur P. Putnam that it was an honor to be called a shit-sniffing worm. 

"I will not be moving from the elf district," Omar said now, hurriedly. "And -- and I need to open up my practice for the day, Faiz. Perhaps we can talk in a few days. On River-Day, maybe--"

"We can drink honey-wine and catch up all day!" Faiz cried.

"Omar does not drink honey-wine," Hil'ki said, stiff about it.

"Yes," Omar said fervently. He hadn't had any of that in months, and had no intention to start again. "Perhaps some almond tea, brother, after the hour of prayers on River-Day. And a walk to the park or something. Now please. I must start my work for the day."

-

He did not start work after Faiz left. Instead, he and Hil'ki proceeded to have the single worst row of their entire marriage. It was a good thing that most of Hil'ki's family was working by this hour, for when Hennat -- the only one with free time at that moment -- crept in, it was to find Hil'ki screaming so loudly that Hennat stopped up short. Then Hennat collected the cowering Howat from Yann's room and promptly departed again.

"You made us all think you had no one to stand for you at the wedding!" Hil'ki cried. "Amayi's relli had to do it! And your brother is a Monrovian corporal--"

"I had no idea he had advanced," Omar said desperately. "And it's complicated, isn't it? Hakash technically _is_ Monrovian, like Praknita and D'laniaa--"

"Do not tell me what D'laniaa is!" Hil'ki shrieked, stamping his foot. "I left my relli and my sire lying in their own blood to stow away with my brothers and come here! D'laniaa is _that_ , Omar! It is a pool of blood in my memory! And I've never hidden that from you! I have introduced you to my whole family, I have welcomed you into my district. I said nothing when you involved yourself in every job I wished to take and every hobby I wanted to take up! I have told you everything about me!

"What else are you hiding from me? Is there some other brother I should know about? Are you the secret cousin of the Monrovian king, perhaps?"

There was Nasir. Omar didn't want to tell him about Nasir.

"Er, the jolly fat man they put on all their coins? No, no, I don't think so--"

"He is not jolly," Hil'ki spat. "He has devoured every corner of the world, and his soldiers have killed most of my people and left the rest as you see us. As your brother sees us. _Unfortunate slum-dwellers_. But I could still welcome your brother, even if he is the Monrovians' pet Hakash, if you had only told him about me!"

"You mean told you about him," Omar corrected, confused. _That_ was what this fight was about.

Hil'ki's face crumpled. A tear slid down his cheek.

"No, Omar. I know my Irvidni is bad, but I mean what I say. You should have told me, yes, but you also didn't tell him. You were not surprised to see his surprise at how you married an elf, yes? You have a whole family, and you never once wrote them about me."

Omar could only gape at this, mouth open. Hil'ki began to cry in earnest, quiet and ashamed.

"I'm not -- it has nothing to do with you," Omar stammered out. "I didn't want them to know about _me_ \--"

Drunkard. Failure. Lecher. 

"Oh, go away, Omar. I do not want to see you today," Hil'ki sobbed.

"I had another brother. He died. He was -- he disgraced my family, Hil'ki. My father also died because of that disgrace. And I thought if two of us were known to be failures, it would be too much disgrace--"

"Why did you never tell me about this brother?" Hil'ki spat, face wet and eyes too bright. "You know every single piece of my disgrace! You know I cannot have a clutch! You know I buy my people everything I can with my worthless cunt! You know about Howat, and how he will never be normal! Is it alright for an _elf_ to be a sorry thing, but not a man? Is that it, Omar?"

"No," Omar stammered, but now Hil'ki was forcing him bodily into the courtyard. 

"Go away! Go away, Omar!" he sobbed. "Leave me alone today!"

And after he closed the door, Omar could still hear his sobs. He sat in the courtyard, helpless to comfort his spouse, and listened to this new song that was so much worse than a D'lani hum. For hours. Alone.

Mostly alone.

Mr. Fig Tree, the Omnion postal demon, came by after about an hour, with a letter for _young Mrs. Preity Prakash, the happiest new bride in Praknita_.

"I'm trying to get them all delivered," he explained in his papery demon voice. "So many undelivered ones, you see, and I let loose all my eggs and have nothing else to do, so I might as well do my job. Actually, if you are Omar Barakat, I have a question about a letter you once posted--"

"The Prakashes live down the street, and Mrs. Preity Prakash was eighty-three years old a month ago, when she died of pneumonia. I signed the death certificate myself," Omar said, short about it. "Now go away! I do not have time for your problems!"

Mr. Fig Tree, chastened, wandered away.

Omar sat and listened to his spouse's sobs again. And it took every ounce of self-control he had to simply sit and wait, and bear the pain, and not go bury himself in a bottle of honey-wine.

-

They knit themselves back together slowly. For the next few days, Haalki helped in the practice. Omar spent nights sleeping on one of his examination tables. Yorrat brought him his meals and sometimes patted his elbow awkwardly, as if to offer comfort. Omar could hear the elves' humming downstairs, but could not hear Hil'ki's distinctive song. Hil'ki did not join in.

Until one day, thin and drawn, he came up to the practice.

"I'm sorry I yelled, Omar," he said. He was staring at the floor, mouth a firm little line.

"I'm sorry," Omar said at once. "You were right. Even with the yells. I should have written to my family about you, and told you about them. I'm not ashamed of you. You're the one thing I'm _proud_ of--"

Hil'ki's mouth quirked, but it wasn't really a smile.

"Tomorrow is River-Day, yes? You will go walking with your brother. Please tell him he's welcome here. He's your brother, Omar. I wouldn't turn him away."

"I know," Omar said at once.

That had never been his worry. His worry really did have nothing to do with Hil'ki. It was all about him, about Omar. The trouble was, no matter how dire his life got, it never really seemed so dire it was worth fixing on his own, because he was Omar and he didn't deserve that. And no matter how _good_ his life got, that didn't seem worth truly bragging about. Because no matter how good he felt, how proud he might be, he still had to walk through life as he was. As this absurdly plain failure of a man.

"Would you like to come to bed, Omar?" Hil'ki asked.

"Yes," Omar said at once. Haroun help him, that was all he would like. To be with his spouse again. 

He couldn't meet the others' eyes, when he went downstairs. But they weren't trying to meet his eyes. Only Howat, who never really looked at anyone, was looking at him. Howat, who had been humming his unusual hum and now subsided, falling again into silence.

They went into their room and closed the door. They were careful lying next to each other. They were like newlyweds -- real newlyweds, who did things in the proper moral way and so did not know each other's bodies, and did not know how close they should be.

"I'm sorry about your other brother," Hil'ki told the quiet of the room. "If you wish to tell me about him, Omar, you can."

Omar didn't wish that. Omar had spent years wishing he could forget Nasir, forget him with honey-wine or with a whore's practiced cunt, it didn't matter how. Just -- just forget him in general.

"He was born sick."

"Like Howat?"

"No," Omar said. "I mean, sickness of the mind, like Howat, yes. But not at all like Howat. Nasir was the handsomest and most charming of us--"

Flashing black eyes. A firm, commanding voice. That curious way of smiling while biting his lip, which had seemed to promise to all his little siblings an afternoon of perfect mischief.

"--and no one could tell he was sick. But he was. It--perhaps an elf wouldn't notice it."

No, come to think of it, an elf would have no idea how to comprehend Nasir's perversions. Elves were simply elves. Young elves, which bore clutches; and then, after their pre-dinkala matured them, they became older elves, and sired the clutches. There was no word for _boy_ or _girl_ in D'lani. Only words for elves of different ages and life stages. 

Omar sighed, and sat on the bed facing his spouse. He took Hil'ki's hand in his. Hil'ki let him, and he was grateful for that, for it helped him to think better.

"You know that in Hakash we follow the God of men, yes? Men. Not as in humans, but as in _men_. We have women, but the prophets of the God of men see them as -- as secondary. Because the God of men, he revealed to them that humans weren't created like elves, which came from starlight, darkness, moonlight on the water, or sunlight through the trees."

Hil'ki blinked.

"I do not know that we come from that at all, Omar," he said carefully.

"You wouldn't!" Omar said. "Your people don't have prophets. It's the job of prophets to watch and record. To take note, and determine from what they learn the best ways to improve people. Like doctors, but for whole races, and especially my race. The race of men. See, man was made by the God of men, borne of His breath. Woman was made to be man's helpmeet. So for humans, there's a big difference between the two.

"In Hakash, daughters mostly just exist to be married off. But sons, sons are very important. The best son will usually be chosen to go learn at the temple, to be a holy man. To be the man other men are supposed to look to when they must determine what sort of men _they_ will be. This was what Nasir was to be. Father insisted on it. He thought someday Nasir might even be the next prophet, the next Haroun."

"That seems like a very big thing to expect of Nasir," Hil'ki said, grasping as he always did the very crux of things. "How old was he, when this was decided?"

"It must have been before I was born," Omar admitted. "When he was one or two, or earlier. He was the eldest of us, and the most beautiful child in all Hakash. My father was one of the holy men, and proud of him. He scarcely noticed me, Faiz, Asma, and Dariya, when we appeared. We were not Nasir."

"Were you jealous?" Hil'ki asked. 

Omar flushed.

"Of course not!"

"There would be no shame if you were," Hil'ki said. "I am jealous of my siblings all the time. Yann and Yorrat are so strong no one bothers them. Hennat and Haalki will get to bear children. Even Howat is much more graceful than I am, only no one notices he is."

Omar supposed that all made sense, but it hadn't been like that with him and Nasir.

"We were only two years apart, and the next youngest, Faiz, five years my junior," he clarified. "So we -- me and Nasir -- we were the elder ones. I adored him. He was funny and good at lessons, and could speak four languages by the time he was ten. He kept all my secrets for me. And I -- I kept his."

Even when he should not have. Now he dropped Hil'ki's hand. He did not feel worthy to hold it. He covered his face with his hands and breathed out, hard.

"Omar?" Hil'ki said worriedly.

"In private," Omar said, once he found his voice, "Nasir was not Nasir. Yes? He had a game. It was supposed to be only a game. He would tell me, 'Omar, I'm not a man. My name isn't Nasir. It's Najma, Omar. Najma, like the Star Goddess. She speaks to me in the night and tells me that I was born wearing the form of a man, but that even with that I can still be myself and that it does me no shame.'"

Nasir had had no shame. Ever. None. Between the brothers, Omar had been the keeper of the shame.

"What is the star goddess?" Hil'ki asked quietly.

Omar gave a humorless laugh.

"A myth of the mad! Haroun's texts never speak of her except to deride those who would believe in her. For the only star-beings recorded are the angels, which we men mistake for elves of the stars--"

"D'Ayyri," Hil'ki said at once. "Very old elves. The first four elves in existence, who will live forever. We have a story about them too, Omar--"

"Yes, well, Haroun is clear that those are the envoys of the one God, the God of men. The only people who talk of the Star Goddess are heretics, Hil'ki. And disgraced women."

"Whores?" Hil'ki said.

"Yes," Omar admitted. "But not just whores. Women who don't want to marry. Or who are -- odd. Or who have odd sons--"

"Like Howat?"

Dammit. Yes.

"She's a kind of totem of outcasts," Omar bit out.

Omar had wanted to believe in her, though. Had wanted to desperately. Not because he disliked the God of men -- the God of men had established that men were to be moral, charitable, prudent, and just if they could be. He was a _good_ God. But Omar -- Omar had been a strange, shy child. Big and fat and yet bad at boys' fighting games, pitiably insecure around anyone unrelated to him, too retiring to so much as raise his hand in lessons. And -- and he had not immediately grasped that he ought to like only women. Often he had liked them. But just as often he liked men. Even in the Master Physician's house, Omar had gone weak at the knees at the sight of Prince Ladolat, who for all his moral failings was an astonishingly handsome man. 

He'd thought Nasir's Najma game was to put _him_ at ease. That his manly brother had sensed the strange oddity in Omar, and created a myth to compensate for it.

"I was the only one he told about being Najma. And I would rather have cut my throat than betray him. But he didn't need me to betray him. By the time he was nineteen or twenty, he was frequenting the encampments outside of Hakash regularly. Places of darkness, by the Rojnari pass. Where they say devils and whores congregate. I suppose he could be Najma there. The holy man he was apprenticed to found out, and had him dragged back to the central square. They lashed him until he had no back left. They had discovered him wearing women's clothes."

Omar still could not let his hands drop. Could not look at Hil'ki. 

"Omar," Hil'ki said patiently. "Do you think he was wearing women's clothes? Or do you--do you think this is just an uokan'i? A prejudice. Maybe _she_ was a woman?"

Now Omar put his hands down, and couldn't help but to stare at his spouse. Dumbfounded.

"What do you mean?" he demanded.

"Omar, elves are just elves, yes? But some of us _do_ like to be women sometimes. Even Amayi is a 'she' in the palace -- it is why Amayi is paid more than the rest of us--"

"For being raped!" Omar said.

He couldn't imagine wanting that, choosing that. As Nasir had wanted to choose it. To not be a man at all. And anyway, it wasn't the same.

"Of course elves can pick and choose when to be men or women," Omar ground out. "You're all both! You have both parts--"

"Omar, it can't just be _parts_ ," Hil'ki said, rolling his eyes. "If it is parts, then I am an elf with no proper elf's womb, and so not an elf at all. But forget that. I'm sorry I interrupted, my love. They lashed your brother. Killed him?"

Omar shook his head.

"He was set for execution," he said. "But my father -- he was a wealthy man. He paid a great sum to have Nasir delivered back home. I think he expected Nasir to be contrite. But Nasir refused to be. He said he would leave us all, and cross the Rojnari into the desert, the Eeyanu, where the wildest cults of the Star Goddess live, and there be a woman even if he starved to death. My father was enraged, and locked him in his room--"

Nasir had begged through the door for Omar to help him. Omar had been afraid to. He had done nothing.

"--so he climbed out through the window. Hakash is not so far from the Eeyanu. The desert is just on the other side of the Rojnari pass. Nasir snuck out to the pass, and my father followed. But even though the desert is hot, the pass is very cold. It is infested with demons. Clay demons, and Omnions. Demons of all kinds. They fill it with the powers of darkness and evil. Thanks to them, it drips with icicles at night, and there are strange, horrible storms that run through it. 

"That night there was a very bad storm. My father took ten servants and called the holy man, and the holy man brought his own servants and men. They pursued Nasir into the storm. They must have been completely unable to make out the twists and turns in the pass. Not a single man came back. But the temple acolytes did find my father and Nasir's bodies."

His father's had been frozen stiff, but recognizable. But something, or someone, had brutally mutilated Nasir. Cut off his cock, as if in parody of his perversions. Omar, who had been studying in the temple then, had been dragged forward, made to say that was his brother. The corpse had had no face left. No crooked smile, the mischief-smile, with the teeth darting out to touch the lower lip.

But the head scholar had still said, almost mockingly, "This is what he wanted, no? So this must be Nasir. The God of men sends us signs. Case closed, Barakat."

Omar had left Hakash not a month later, to toil for five years as an apprentice physician, before he was thrown out of that, too. 

\- 

He slept in the next morning, on River Day. He'd spent most of the night unable to hold back from sobbing into Hil'ki's shoulder, and when he woke the elf was still rubbing his back and humming to him, as he'd been when Omar had fallen asleep.

"Your brother is here," Hil'ki noted. "My brothers are trying to entertain him."

Omar could hear that. Specifically, he could hear Faiz enquiring if any of the elves could climb up on the ceiling and show off their tree-sap abilities, and whether their cocks fell off when they swelled up with babies, and why some appeared to be almost completely like normal men.

"Sap takes hours to form," Yorrat grunted, though this was a complete lie. "Grow _extra_ cock when we have baby. And I not normal, Great Corporal. I look normal. But have three cunts, yes? Under my vest, under right nipple."

There was a pause.

"You're having me on," said an uncertain Faiz.

Omar groaned and forced himself out of Hil'ki's arms. He splashed his face with the water in the washstand, and pulled on a clean set of clothes and his sandals. Then he staggered out to find Faiz sitting almost primly in a circle of extremely beleaguered-looking elves. 

"Omar!" his brother cried, brightening when he saw him. "Shall we go out for breakfast? We can go to the new Monrovian pavilion restaurant, in Ladolat's hunting park. I've gotten us permits."

Omar blinked at him.

"Each of those permits must be at least four hundred rudins," he said.

"Oh, I paid in Monrovian coins," Faiz said, not at all noting the scowls on the faces of the elves. "It's much less in Monrovian currency, I assure you."

Omar then had to strenuously refuse to go to the hunting park, just to keep the Guards-The-Branches clutch from descending into mutiny. Which posed no problem for him, as he didn't want to go to the hunting park anyway.

They had breakfast by stopping at a cart that sold reasonably-priced spiced chickpeas, which was what Omar could afford. Then they walked to the park of fountains, in the temple district, which seemed to Omar to be a perfectly decent park mostly because it was a free park.

Faiz was in a good mood, but silent for much of the walk. He seemed to be trying to come up with something to say. Omar almost felt bad for him. It had been so long since they had seen each other, and the truth was -- Faiz and he had always been brothers, but never quite friends. As a child, Omar had really only been close to Nasir. Omar had not always been easy to get along with. In some ways, he had been the Yorrat of his family. 

"I regret—" Faiz said eventually, when they'd reached the first fountain and were both sitting on a bench, staring at a man inexplicably running from an enraged peacock, a common sight in Praknita now that Ladolat was overtaxing the park keepers who were supposed to manage the animals, "—I regret that I landed in my own muddle when you needed me most, Omar."

"I could say the same to you," Omar said. "You were, what, seventeen? When you were sent to fight those Norderland demons."

The same age Omar had been, when Nasir had died and he had fled Hakash.

"Yes," said Faiz agreeably. "Are you happy?"

"I am the happiest I have been in seven years," Omar said truthfully.

"Because of your elf," tried Faiz.

"And the others, yes. But mostly Hil'ki. He's a good spouse. I'm blessed, brother. He is the reason my practice has grown as it has, whatever anyone else may say. I wasn't some genius who discovered a knack for working with elves. I'm a dullard who was lucky enough to have an elf work with me."

"Ah, Omar," Faiz said with a smile. "Always so modest. Mother will be glad to know you have kept that trait."

Omar started. But of course Faiz would write their mother. And Asma and Dariya, too. He felt his face heat up at the thought. There were three more people he had failed. He had not written them in over two years. 

"You will have a son, you know," Faiz said now, in a canny sort of tone.

"What?" said Omar.

"A son," Faiz said. "I know something of the elves, you see. John -- the Lord General. He sang their praises. He had an elf lover once. And there were one or two other Monrovians who remembered the taking of D'laniaa. They say, Omar, that when these beings lie with men, they produce one human child for their spouses. One elf, too. But also a human, a perfect copy of the father. Praise Haroun, eh, brother? You will have a son."

Omar swallowed, hard. He was not ashamed of Hil'ki. He was _not_. He did not want children of his own, so he could hardly be ashamed that Hil'ki would never give them to him. But -- but he couldn't bare that little tragedy, that vulnerability that marred even Hil'ki's constant good cheer, to a man like Faiz. A man of Hakash, who would see a barren bride as a creature hardly worth the trouble of keeping alive.

Luckily, Faiz swiftly moved on.

"You do good work among his people. You are a good, moral man, Omar. Always the best of us, I think. But you know, even Haroun, who said man must do charity, did not say man must do nothing _but_. If you will not move locations, brother, then consider expanding your practice--"

"Expanding?" said Omar. "What do you mean?"

"You are a doctor, and entitled to run a chain of practices--"

"No," Omar said. "They call me a doctor. But I can lawfully only have one practice. I was never granted my mastery--"

Faiz waved him off.

"A quibble. So the Master Physician refused you. A prince can sign the license just as well as he can--"

"I don't know any princes," Omar protested, but Faiz was waving again.

" _Omar_. Your brother commands all Hakash. Where do you think I am staying, hmm? In the palace of my fellow ruler. Ladolat. Ladolat likes me. I praise him, and feed his vanity. And he, like my holy men, would see those perverse desert star cults and darkness demons and their ugly golems wiped out, so we have something of an agreement between us. No, if you want that license, Omar, then by tonight it can be yours."

Now Faiz grinned, a bit wickedly.

"Just think, brother, of the expression that Master Physician will be wearing then."

-

Omar did think of it, of course. Omar thought of it so wickedly and so completely that by nightfall, at the hour he had promised Hil'ki he would be home, he was not home. He was instead in the great jeweled palace of Ladolat the Heavenly-Blessed-Prince, the sole ruler of the red-walled city of Praknita, and thus the king of the province of Demarwal, and thus the wealthiest and most powerful non-Monrovian in all the lands of Irvidni.

There were fountains here too. They were made of gold, and the peacocks in them were less aggressive. Possibly because they were being led around by very naked girls. Omar watched those girls traipse about in the waters, giggling and batting their eyelashes at him, bathed in the jewel-light that emanated from every wall, and mostly just thought about all the illnesses these girls could be catching. There was a bit of a chill in Ladolat's jewel-palace, for all that Praknita was one of the warmest places in the world. 

Faiz had gone down a set of marble steps and into a leafy garden to find Ladolat. He had instructed Omar to remain here between two of his own soldiers, soldiers of Hakash, who for men of Hakash seemed a bit too interested in the naked girls. 

"Are either of you fellows married?" Omar asked carefully. "I am married. Thus, I avert my eyes."

"I'm not," said one, quite unconcerned by the question, and quite determined to goggle at the round, ripe breasts of the girls.

"Er, yes," said the other. "But I've been on campaign for six years. It's entirely possible she's left me for the desert. You know how women are when they think of the desert."

Omar nodded, though he did not in fact know. But by asking the question, he seemed to have opened the floodgates for the second soldier.

"These aren't even worth looking at," he told Omar. "You know who is? Princess Salina!"

"Ladolat's...niece?" Omar tried.

He really didn't know much of the ins and outs of the nobility. Nor did he care. It had driven the Master Physician to distraction.

"Or cousin or something," said the second soldier, raising his eyebrows suggestively. "The prettiest girl you will ever see, and very demure. She is like a bride just before marriage: eyes downcast, silent unless spoken to. A rare thing in this unholy city, and yet she is its princess!"

Omar wondered if maybe she was like Howat. It would explain why he'd never heard of her. Ladolat might be hiding her away. People often did, when they had a child like that. 

Now Faiz hurried back. He, too, scarcely glanced at the naked girls or the peacocks. Possibly he saw these sorts of things all the time now.

"He will see you," he told Omar excitedly. "Just play along, Omar. He may ask one or two things of you -- Ladolat is indolent and spoiled, and likes to have his own way -- but he will sign! You will be a master physician in minutes!"

He drew Omar out to the garden, a garden of lotus, jasmine, and oleander. Bright lizards darted down the jewel-studded walk in front of them, and in the center of the garden, lounging on a lawn among yet more naked, beautiful women, was Ladolat.

Omar had not seen the prince in years. Ladolat was still magnificent. He seemed to convey that to be made of dust and mud and breath by the God of men -- that was an ancestry fit for other people. Not for one so perfect as him. He had clearly been carved of fine wood, or perhaps a dark burnished gold yet to be discovered. Though Omar knew he must be fifty or sixty, the prince looked as young as a man of twenty-five. His golden-brown skin was smooth and perfect, his wide grey gaze alert as a cat's. His hair was a thick shock of shining white.

"So this is the elf physician," he said, smiling to reveal gleaming teeth. "Come here, Omar Barakat of Hakash. Let me see the man so humble and good that he tends the lowliest whores in the kingdom. I'm a prince, you know, and I don't think you will be able to dirty me up just by looking at me. Caste is stronger than that."

"I don't believe in caste, sir," Omar said. Despite the alarmed look Faiz shot him, even a coward like him could not be silent on this point. "That was a cause for some disagreement, between myself and the master physician."

Ladolat's laugh was musical and low.

"We need caste," he said. "Caste structures the world, establishes order. Did not even Haroun of Hakash categorize all creatures? Some of the hells, some of the heavens. Some, like men, of the earth? What is that but caste, physician?"

Omar blinked at this. He hated that Ladolat had a point, but he had to concede it. He gave a tight nod.

This seemed to please the handsome prince. Ladolat stood gracefully, drawing a white robe around him, and waved away all but one of his women, one that had been sitting a bit behind the others.

But no. No, this woman stood with him, and proved too tall, flat-chested, and broad-shouldered to be a woman. And her hands were veined bright red.

"Sirit, go get my pen," Ladolat instructed. "I will make this man a master physician. It will be amusing. But before I do, Omar of Hakash, I want your word on something."

"My word?" Omar said. He watched Sirit walk away. He was sure this must look like lust, but it was not lust. It was shock. _That_ was Amayi's beloved?

Sirit was nowhere near as delicately beautiful as the D'lani that loved him. He was not so beautiful as the wickedest of demons were said to be. He was attractive, yes, and Omar himself might have responded to it were he not in love with Hil'ki, and as a rule opposed to demons. But even with that, Sirit was rather normal for an elf. Just another elf well past his pre-dinkala, with the form and blank face of a man despite his red fingers, pointed ears, and long white hair.

"Tarek El Sattar. The only master physician currently in the city," Ladolat said, with a smile. "I cannot ask him to treat my whores or my servants. This is a trial for me, Omar of Hakash. I like to see my people cared for. Did not the heavens place me above them, as their ruler, to ensure they are protected by me? But a visitor from Monrovia uses a whore too harshly, and, well. Tarek will do nothing. Will recommend she go to a common herbalist, who will stuff her full of quack remedies and leave her bleeding down her legs. I cannot have that. Three days a week, Omar of Hakash, you will come here. River-Day, Palm-Day, Rice-Day. You will treat my staff for me. Teach them that I am not so callous as they think -- that I _do_ care. Pledge to do this, and I will pay you well, and make you a Master Physician."

Omar nodded dumbly, for he hadn't been expecting this of Ladolat. 

"You are good and just to think of your servants," he managed. Ladolat was not said to be this good or this just. And yet, apparently, he was.

Ladolat's answering smile was radiant.

"I like you, Omar of Hakash," he said, and he signed with a flourish the license that would make Omar, a disgraced recovering drunkard, into a real physician.


	7. Of Demons, Men, and Angels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: Omar is not getting over his prejudices in a single chapter.

"But you were always a doctor, Omar," was Hil'ki's response. "A man who doctors well and honestly to all? That is a doctor. It has nothing to do with the signature of a prince."

He had been, predictably, annoyed that Omar had come home late. And though he had pulled together a celebration for Omar the next day, and nearly seventy elves had descended upon the ramshackle house at Hil'ki's word to toast to Omar's good fortune, Hil'ki still did not seem to grasp the many wonderful possibilities open to them now that Omar was a master physician in his own right. 

"Think what my friend Doctor Clement will say, when I write him!"

"Clement does not care about your having been only an apprentice," Hil'ki said flatly. "He has always been clear about that. I wouldn't waste the money it takes to use railway mail these days, just to have him tell you that again."

This was the obvious answer. Clement Nenge was a kind man, despite being perhaps one of the wisest physicians in the world. Omar, by contrast, had always been one of the stupidest. Until now. Now -- now he could practice real medicine. Take apprentices. Open many offices. Charge more than fifty rudins if he wanted to, for Haroun's sake, not that he ever did charge that much, since his clients often had not one rudin to spare.

Though Hil'ki disliked the thought of Omar working three days a week in the palace, for several days Omar could hear no criticisms of the plan. For the first time in -- in perhaps _ever_ \-- he felt as though he were a man worthy to have a medical practice. To have a family. To have the spouse he had, his practical, fussy, occasionally ill-tempered elf-love, Hil'ki Guards-the-Branches, the clever caretaker of all the refugee D'lani in Praknita. 

"You have always been important among your people," Omar told him. "You don't know it, my love, but you have been. There would _be_ no elven district but for you. You've brought them schooling, trade, even a doctor! But me -- I have never been great among my own kind, among men. And now, love, now I can be."

Despite this, he woke the next River-Day very anxious, and was nearly prepared to try and argue that they should all flee the city right now, all of them, Omar and all of the elves, for he was certain to fail at being a royal physician and thus would likely bring disgrace, calumny, and shame upon all their heads.

Hil'ki made him drink an almond drink to calm himself. 

"Yann and Haalki? You two also work in the palace today, yes? You two will keep an eye on him."

"Alright. If you are about to shame yourself, Omar, I will kick you in the ankle to warn you," Haalki said, a little too brightly for Omar's liking.

"Exactly," Hil'ki said soothingly. "See, Omar? All will be well. It is the perfect plan."

Omar began to feel as if his spouse wasn't taking him seriously. Still, Hil'ki kissed his brow and walked him to the door, and stood waving at him until Omar had crossed into one of the main thoroughfares.

Haalki would not be able to kick him in warning, it turned out. He worked in the palace kitchens. And Yann, he was a palace carpenter. Omar, as the newly appointed in-house physician, had nothing to do with kitchens or carpenters. He was shown to a high-ceilinged, beautiful set of offices that had already been prepared for him, with his own fountain and five examination rooms, and a full store-cupboard of medicines. There was even a surgery, with much better surgical implements than the ones Omar carefully cleaned each night and stowed away in his medical bag. The whole place made him feel inadequate. He must have wandered his assigned apartments for twenty minutes, letting his jaw drop at everything.

Like all the rest of Ladolat's palace, the walls here were a jeweled mosaic. Sapphire, topaz, ruby, amethyst, emerald, and above all else bits of shining diamond. Light played off of everything, and bounced in rainbow colors off the waters of the fountain. It was like being in the first heaven described by Haroun, the heaven of color and peace.

Unlike the ramshackle practice, which saw anywhere from twenty to forty patients per day, on this day Omar saw just two. The first was a human man with a burned arm, who apparently also worked in the kitchens.

"You know Haalki?" Omar asked. "He is my brother-in-law."

"Is that so?" the man said amiably, as Omar finished bandaging his arm for him. "Thank you, doctor. Praise be to prince Ladolat for bringing you here."

The second was a gardener, and Omar was stunned to discover that she was a demon, an Eelie. But there was nothing cold, profane, or strange about her despite that. She was a calm Eelie who worked among Ladolat's lotuses, and she had sliced into her thigh with a pair of pruning shears. Omar stitched it for her.

"It will heal. You are very healthy, you know, so a little thing like this will not keep you down."

"Still, I'm grateful to Ladolat," sighed the Eelie. "What a good prince, to have brought you here to us, doctor."

It was like this on the next day, Palm-Day. He removed a splinter from the finger of a cloven-hoofed demon like George, who bred ponies for Ladolat and was similarly thankful to the prince to have a doctor there to treat his splinters. And he offered some bruise salve to a slender, colorless Monrovian bed servant, a human woman, who unlike Amayi seemed to think very highly of Ladolat.

"He does care for us, and for all things," she said. "As a ruler should. And he brought you here, doctor. That is a true blessing."

"You've treated two people?" Hil'ki asked incredulously that night. "But Omar, today alone there were forty-five here! Yorrat had to block some at the door, for they wouldn't all fit in the waiting room. Tai'vi and I could give most of them what they needed, following your notes, but that is forty-five who could have seen a proper doctor, while you were treating only two!"

Omar nodded, allowing this. It was a sensible, and rather disturbing, observation. But even so.

"I made Ladolat a promise. We will have to tell our regulars that they can only come four days a week. The other three days I am to work for the prince, my love."

On the third day, Rice-Day, he saw Amayi.

Not as a patient. That day, he had no patients. The hours stretched by, and though Ladolat had many medical tomes, these mostly frustrated Omar. They were old and full of inaccuracies. The chapters on jungle elves alone were so stupid and backwards they might have been written by Monrovians, the writer bizarrely doing everything he could to prove by twisted biological reasoning that the D'lani were a badly-constructed race of frolicking savages with short lifespans, good for breeding but not much else. 

Omar eventually put the text down in disgust. He decided he would wander a bit, just a bit, just to, perhaps, the next fountain he saw. There were so many fountains in the palace. They went well with the jeweled mosaics. He would probably not make it more than ten feet before he found the next one. 

He somehow managed to wander into an entirely different wing of the palace.

He thought perhaps it might be the wing Faiz had been staying in. His brother had returned to Hakash a few days ago, for he'd only been in Praknita to see Omar and make a few treaties concerning mutual aggression towards the desert demons.

But he'd spoken fondly of Ladolat's guest chambers, with the many beautiful bed servants in attendance. Faiz was an unmarried man, and so could speak of such things. 

He was not the only guest the prince had. Hakash was only the northernmost province of the Irvidni continent, a small, independent province that was not really a part of Irvidni at all, according to its inhabitants. Then, just below it, there was the valley of Demarwal, which sheltered Praknita. And just below Demarwal there were one hundred and twelve provinces more. That Irvidni was all one land was of course a fiction of the Monrovians, that all the varied peoples and species of Irvidni could make up a single nation. Irvidni was really three hundred or so separate settlements, with fields of fertile farmland and snarling bands of jungle, mountain ranges, and deserts. Wealth in every corner of it, most particularly in red-walled Praknita, the city of Irvidni's oldest, wealthiest, most revered royal line.

Other princes thus paid court to Ladolat all the time. The prince Omar saw now had the pale olive skin and long, purple-dyed beard of the Gerupta province far in the South, a place that Hil'ki sometimes spoke of because there was another refugee elf settlement there, where lived yet more cousins. The Gerupta prince was a small man, but with powerful arms and thighs, all tattooed in purple as was the custom of his people.

Even his thick, stubby cock was tattooed. Omar knew this because it was thrusting harshly into Amayi.

The sight froze Omar, made him a worthless, cowardly, scared little lizard of a man. Amayi had been gagged, and bound in silken ropes to hang from the ceiling with his thighs splayed. The Gerupta prince fucked into him with abandon, one purple-tattooed hand firmly mauling his heavy breasts as Amayi tried to take great shuddering breaths in. The elf's pretty eyes were full of tears.

"He'll tighten if you slap him, won't you, slut?" came a mocking, wicked voice.

Sirit. The demon Sirit, the father of Amayi's own children, lounging on a couch and watching the scene with languid pleasure.

"Will-- he--?" panted the Gerupta.

He tested it. He hit Amayi in the face, the action so harsh Omar started. Amayi's head rocked back, and still he was fucked into, pierced on the stubby cock. 

"Praise Ladolat, he _does_ tighten!" grunted the Gerupta prince.

"Punch his stomach!" jeered Sirit, eyes shining. "I love when the bitch's stomach is punched!"

Amayi let out a frightened whine, and now even Omar could not take this. He found himself moving into the room with a yell, an animal roar of rage. He pulled the demon from his couch and hit _him_ , making Sirit fall to the floor with the hit. The Gerupta prince gave a scream and backed away, leaving Amayi hanging there with a bruise on his cheek and green blood on his thighs.

"Beast!" Omar cried. Though he moved now to unbind his friend, he kept his eyes on the demon.

The demon was laughing. He scarcely seemed to care that he had been hit.

"Oh, how good of Ladolat," he crooned. "To have brought his slaves and whores such a noble, moral physician. Praise Ladolat the kind, eh, Amayi?"

Omar got the elf's gag off and began to work on untying the ropes about his thighs. Amayi still looked very frightened.

"Y-yes, Sirit. Praise Prince Ladolat."

Omar paused. Stared at the tear tracks on Amayi's face. Amayi _hated_ Ladolat, and he had not thought these would be the first words to come from the elf's mouth. Nor the last. Nor words Amayi would ever say.

Sirit was grinning at them.

"Forgive the intrusion, Prince Vrithik. You may fuck me instead if you like," he told the prince, his voice now musical and sweet. "These are the little games played by the lower castes, but they do not affect the plans of the truly blessed. The princes like you, Prince Vrithik."

Now the demon was crawling to the affronted-looking Gerupta prince, rear swaying in an admittedly intoxicating fashion.

"Fuck me hard," crooned Sirit. "In prayer to my master, Ladolat. Please, good princeling. Would you like your cock sucked? Your piss drunk?"

Amayi gave a wild sob here, at this. But Sirit kept talking.

"I am a D'Sula, the lowest caste of elf," Sirit said, mad and demonic, so demonic he was pleased with his madness. "There is nothing you cannot do to me that I won't deserve, no pain you can inflict that I am not meant to receive, Prince Vrithik. What say you to that?"

Prince Vrithik smiled, his teeth white in his purple beard.

"Praise your master, then, my good bitch," he said happily.

-

Omar took Amayi back to his new offices. He felt shaken. He could not understand what he had just seen. He knew it was weak of him, to look to Amayi for an explanation. But that was all he could do now, as he rubbed crocus-salve into the sobbing elf to try and reduce the swelling on Amayi's face and in his battered cunt.

"He said -- they _punch_ you?"

Amayi was shuddering as he cried.

"Praise be to Ladolat that I have not fallen pregnant again, eh, Omar?"

The cries became ugly, ugly laughs. Omar was horrified, and pulled the elf into his arms. He almost instinctively began to hum to Amayi. But the hum -- no. He was not an elf. He was doing it wrong. The sound was twisted a bit, as the sound of Amayi's own cries was.

"It doesn't work," Amayi said sadly. "You haven't noticed it yet, Omar. But one cannot sing here. Even the fountains don't have a sound, you know."

Omar stopped short.

That -- that was true. Even Ladolat's fountains had no song. The girls in the fountains, they giggled, but not in a way one could really hear. Sirit's evil voice, even that had been a bit low and off. Omar's own yells had sounded strange, too.

The entire palace was suffused in a quiet so holy that it rivaled the prayer-halls of Hakash. Constructed for that, perhaps, as the prayer halls were. Omar squinted up at the high ceilings, worried now for all the elves who worked here. The elves needed their song, their sound. It was a part of them. No wonder Hil'ki always described the palace with such derision and dislike.

"Why did you come here, Omar?" Amayi whispered now. "This is a horrible place. An elf can get by here -- Ladolat _likes_ elves, in his own way. So long as we keep to our places. But I worry for you. Hil'ki loves you. If something happens to you--"

"Worry for me?" Omar said. This made no sense. He stepped back to look Amayi in the eye.

"I am a doctor," he said firmly. "It is my job to worry for you, Amayi. Not the other way around. My job to look after you. You must ask Ladolat not to let you near that demon--"

Clearly it was Sirit who was the cause of so much of Amayi's pain. For Ladolat was silly and arrogant, but he seemed to mean well. No, no, this was some twisted love spat between the elf and the demon. Sirit was abusive and possessive, as men could get with their wives. Very likely he was jealous of the fact that his once-lover, the mother of his young, worked offering his cunt to visiting princes.

Amayi just laughed.

"Sirit wasn't always like this, Omar. You have to understand that. Once he was kind. He carved, he wove, he sang. He gave me many gifts. But there was a change in him--"

Yes. Well. Omar's father had always been perfectly kind and loving, up until Nasir had not done as he wanted. Then he'd become towering and judgmental, and dressed one son down so harshly that now, years later, the second son remembered it and felt in his bones his own weak inadequacies. Always. 

"Sirit is like this now. He has shown you his true face. An evil face. Believe him! And fix your heart elsewhere, Amayi."

Amayi looked up at him, eyes wet.

"If Hil'ki saw a side of you that was not you, that was only your cruelty, your worst parts," he whispered, in his own way just as mad as the demon he loved, mad to justify his perverse affection for Sirit, "and you -- you had no chance to make it up to him, to atone. Would you tell him the same?"

-

Ladolat came by the medical rooms at the end of that day, for this was the last day of the first shift Omar had worked at the palace.

"How are you getting on?" the prince asked languidly, grey eyes so bright they nearly hypnotized Omar with their beauty. "Have I done well by you, my master physician?"

Omar hastened to tell him that he had. That the examination rooms were perfect, the surgical implements very fine ones. That his palace was spectacular, and his servants for the most part polite.

All but Sirit.

Omar _had_ to tell the prince of the evils his pet demon had encouraged, the wicked games Sirit seemed to concentrate on Amayi. He knew the prince was said to be a silly, vain man. He knew Ladolat scarcely ran the city, and that in fact many of Praknita's evils, its poverty, the ill treatment of its most vulnerable, were due to Ladolat's careless approach to ruling. Ladolat could have fixed the schools, the libraries, the postal system. Ladolat elected not to.

But he thought that the prince's heart was in the right place. Ladolat did not seem to judge Omar as Omar described what he had seen. The prince seemed only to be calm. Assessing. His bright grey eyes narrowed, and he nodded along as Omar described the scene, taking it in.

"Ah, this Sirit," he sighed. "A demon, you call him? You Hakash, you have your own words for things. How many classes of elves do you believe in again?"

Omar haltingly explained Haroun's system. One set of elves for the heavens: the elves of starlight. One set of elves for the air: the jungle elves. One set for the waters: the sea elves. And one set from the hells. Demons, like Sirit.

Ladolat's mouth pursed. He considered this.

"Four kinds, yes. That's correct. There are four kinds. I am fascinated by elves, as you call them. The Monrovians, they call them ariellads, dryads, naiads, and saluads. They see them all as much the same, but you, Omar, you understood at once the differences. There are castes of elves, as with people. You know of the star goddess, yes? This evil thing that tempts so many of your own brothers and sisters out to the desert?"

Omar swallowed hard.

"Yes," he admitted, although he did not understand the connection.

"She is a saluad, a D'Sula," Ladolat told him, and grinned when Omar's face went slack with shock.

"She pretends to be an angel, an elf of the stars, see?" Ladolat continued. "But she lures men and women out of their proper places, for she is a temptress--"

"As all the demon elves are," Omar breathed out, finally understanding. He felt -- he felt enraged. His whole body seemed to swell with his anger. For a moment, he could scarcely think for it. 

"Yes, just right," said Ladolat, with a smile. "Let me tell you a story, Omar."

Though all sounds were hushed in the palace, Prince Ladolat's voice seemed an exception. It was cool and light, but utterly certain, so certain Omar could not help but to fixate upon it, helpless but to listen. 

Listening at least banked some of the rage in him.

"My great-grandfather, Prince Hajari. He was hunting in the hunting park one day, and came upon an adder. It was an evil thing. Another one of these demon saluads. They can shapeshift, though nowhere near as perfectly as the ariellads can. They can only be snakes, I think. Adders in particular, as though the heavens can only permit them to be the wickedest of the wicked.

"Hajari defeated the adder, and would have killed it. But it bartered for its life the secret of where to find a beautiful D'Ayyri, an ariellad. In the desert. A star-elf, a real one, singing her way down from the heavens on a rainbow to reach her walled garden. Hajari went and wooed her, and they fell in love, and well--"

Ladolat gestured at himself, at his stunningly perfect form.

"Now you have me," he said simply. "I am descended from that long-ago elf. A perfect, good elf of the heavens. That is why I am as you see me. And that is why I, too, hate the false star goddess. She is not a real star girl. She is a snake, sitting in the desert, luring men to their deaths. And she makes strange creations, and whelps demons like herself. Sirit is one. I captured him on one of my own hunting trips to the Rojnari pass. I am too soft-hearted to kill him--"

"You are a moral man. It would horrify anyone to kill him, for he cannot help being evil," Omar said, trying to find some reason amidst his own anger.

Ladolat gave a sad smile.

"Precisely. I hold out hope that I can _improve_ him, Omar. Treat his sickness. As you treat men's bodies, I hope that, here in my palace, surrounded by light and wealth and freedom, Sirit will someday stop being what he cannot help but be. You will call me a fool, Omar. But in Hakash, do they not say that this is how the angels regard men?"

Ladolat's eyes were wet now, as wet as Amayi's had been. Omar blinked, feeling as though he were reliving the same event twice-over.

"Angels, too, want men not to fail, Omar. Want men to be the best they can be, pious and worshipful and _good_ , even though men will never be anything but failures and beasts."

-

He was somber when he made it home later that evening. Full of strange, unsettled, angry thoughts.

Omar had always liked being a physician, and treating bodies. But what men needed, really needed, was treatment for their souls. And that was a job for prophets and angels, for beings much better than Omar.

He was not enough. He had not been enough, not in Hakash with his brother. And likely whatever he tried his hand at now, he would also fail at. For he was awkward, foolish. Plain and too large, full of moral weakness. 

He was a _man_ , as Ladolat had explained men to be. Nasir -- Nasir had been tricked into thinking he could simply be something else. Omar had never comprehended that. How could you simply decide not to be what the God of men had made you? If he shaped you like a man, then you were a man. You could not wriggle away from that. _Omar_ could not wriggle away from what he was, either, from his many failings and infirmities. 

There could be no striving to be more. Not really. 

Yann and Tai'vi were making the sounds of love in their room, and Yorrat was out, it seemed. Haalki, Hennat, and Howat were asleep in their bedrolls. Omar went and sat at the little table by the door to the courtyard, head in his hands. 

He wanted honey-wine. He was weak like that. And now he felt -- no, _knew_ , that he always would be that weak. Why was he even putting off his pleasures? Why did he not go at once, and indulge himself? It seemed likely that eventually -- eventually he would do that. No matter how he wished to be better. 

A light hand touched his shoulder. He looked up.

Hil'ki, who was so much better than a man, stood silhouetted in the doorway to the courtyard.

"Omar, I've just come from Amayi's," he said. "He told me what happened. Can we talk? You need to stop going to the palace, Omar."

-

Omar was not in a mood to fight, and did not set out to fight. He set out to do things as they did them in Hakash, with reasoned arguments. Omar was naturally better at this than Hil'ki, who came from a culture more prone to mad spats and little blow-ups. Omar had the clear evidence of his master physician's license to back up his position.

Hil'ki only had suppositions.

"Omar, yes, I never saw more than the palace kitchens," he said impatiently, sitting on the bed and wringing his green-tipped hands. "But something about that place makes people change. Lose themselves. This is why Hennat, Haalki, and I -- we always took shifts there. Pretended to be one elf, so we could avoid working a full day, ever. Yann and Yorrat do the same, and so do nearly all the elves who can manage it. Amayi and his brother did it until Amayi fell pregnant and his body changed. I -- I have been grateful that you said you would only work there three days a week."

His face crumpled a bit.

"I should have told you at once that I was worried about the palace. I have kept that secret from you. It was wrong of me. You're so _happy_ to have that license, Omar. But I never thought you would end up there--"

"Look at this," Omar said. He upended a sack onto the bed.

Another piece of evidence. The pay Ladolat's secretary had handed him, on his way out of the palace. Three days' pay, and yet it was more than Omar had made in all the past year. Rudins, Monrovian coins. Ten pieces of gold, and three perfect jewels. Light bounced off of an emerald, an emerald no less perfectly green than Hil'ki's fingertips. 

Hil'ki who worked himself ragged and wore trousers of sackcloth, and deserved better.

Omar could have said all this, but kept his peace for a moment, not feeling up to pressing the point. And, really, the generous pay said all he needed it to say.

"This for treating how many people?" was Hil'ki's reply. "Four? Five? Omar, that itself is not right, that this is what he gives you, while today ten separate people begged for treatment when they could not give us but one rudin!"

"Would you like to count yourself among them?" Omar tried. "I know Praknita is unjust, that the poor live differently from the rich."

But this was life. He still felt despondent, as if he could not change himself, and yet that too was insight, wasn't it? If you could not change yourself, why rail at a society that very likely also could not be changed? Things were as they were, and man only fit to cope as best he could. Haroun's texts sometimes said just that, after all.

So Omar continued, reasonably: "You sold yourself in a _brothel_ , my love, for a quarter of this--"

Hil'ki flushed bright green.

"Omar, that has nothing to do with this--"

"It has everything to do with it!" Omar said, disliking this budding fight, disliking that it had to _be_ a fight, and not simply a reasoned discussion. He was not getting his points across, somehow. He was not adequate, not up to the task of convincing his spouse. But he tried regardless, for he loved Hil'ki. 

"This money means you need never do that again. Need never work in a circus with golems and other demons. All in exchange for just three days when you lend your husband to the palace--"

"Did you treat Yorrat today?" Hil'ki asked, loud and a bit wild now. "Yorrat dropped a hammer on his foot. I had to treat him when he came home, give him some arrowroot drink for the pain. It made him so drowsy that he fell asleep in the examination room. He's still sleeping there now. Go see! If you are to treat Ladolat's servants, then why did Ladolat not send him to you?"

Omar frowned, and massaged his temples. Tried yet again.

"Perhaps Yorrat didn't alert the prince. Ladolat isn't all-knowing. And if none of you extend your trust to him, then of course he cannot help you."

But Hil'ki was past reason now.

"Torrat, he and his clutch trade off on working in the palace stables. His brother sprained his ankle on River-day. He came here, Omar! He was never directed to you, either!"

"Then that is _my_ flaw," Omar insisted. "I will start seeking out the hurt servants, as a physician should. That is no reason to go back on my word to Ladolat. That would make me a bad man, my love, and a bad physician."

Omar's fault, all of this. Omar needing to be better, and yet failing at being better. He was a lazy man, spending all his time in his fine medical wing. 

Hil'ki would not understand what it was to be so useless. Omar's spouse still went every day from elf-hovel to elf-hovel, inquiring, offering his aid. 

-

"You work so very hard," Ladolat told him, after a few weeks of Omar conducting full palace rounds, seeking out all those who might need a physician. 

The prince now came at the end of every Rice-Day to check in on Omar, and seemed in this way a very attentive employer.

"You reflect well on me," the prince decided. "Yes? I was very wise to bring you on."

"You have been ever kind and good to me, my prince," Omar assured him. "You deserve a better reputation than you have--"

" _I_ think so," Ladolat agreed, humming his answer a bit. The hum was swallowed up by the perfect, silent calm of his palace, but not before Ladolat's way of speaking seemed to urge Omar to confide in him.

Ladolat always had something of that about him. Omar, who was still feeling low, and had felt low ever since his first week in the palace, was prodded into speaking.

"My prince, you have given me a chance to know myself. I-- for many years I have failed to understand my shortcomings. My own defects. Where I am from, they would say that I have failed at being a pious man, my prince--"

"Piety? That is only knowing one's place in the order of things," Ladolat said dismissively. The light from the mosaic walls, bouncing off the bright fountains, made his white hair shine. Omar blinked at him.

"Well," he said, thinking this over. "Perhaps. I think I did not understand myself as a man, as a weak creature easily misled. I knew it. But I didn't understand, prince Ladolat. I dreamed of being a master physician. But what is a master physician? It is not a prophet. It is not an angel. It is only -- only the same man I was, just as hopeless to fix my flaws. But now with a license."

Ladolat smiled. He always smiled so much, in his own way such a placid, happy man that to be near him made smiles an infection. Made a small part of Omar think fruitlessly that if he were different, if he were not pathetic, he might catch the self-assurance that Ladolat appeared to always have in his heart. It reminded Omar a bit of Nasir, of how Nasir's bitten-lip mischief-smile had made one feel. Only Ladolat's smile was not so warm as Nasir's, for he was a prince and thus much more removed. 

"Did you ever think you could fix your flaws?" Ladolat said now. Smiling and smiling.

Omar was uncertain. 

He could not understand how, with the handsome, kind prince before him, looking at him with such acceptance and mirth, he himself could still feel no greater than a worm. 

"I. My spouse. He is the best creature I know," he found himself confessing, though until now he had never thought to speak of Hil'ki to Ladolat. "Well, I suppose I thought his kindness, his worth and goodness, might rub off on me. If I -- if I had some small bit of his devotion to others. That might make me pious. Not as miserable as I always am. As I am, when I am always thinking of myself." 

Still Ladolat smiled and smiled.

"Omar," he told his physician. "You are just a man. You really are not worth thinking of at all, if you think about it."

-

Over the next few months, they settled into the new routine. Four days a week, Omar worked with Hil'ki in the ramshackle practice, from sunup to sundown, sometimes seeing fifty patients a day. The three remaining days he spent in the palace, making more than enough money to make the other days worth it.

Sometimes Howat followed him there.

Howat, of all Omar's brothers in law, seemed to love Omar the best. He loved him in a Howat-way, which involved never meeting Omar's eyes and never saying a word to Omar. But Omar and the odd elf got along, and had ever since Omar had been a bleary-eyed, large drunkard leading Howat to the bay, so that Howat could gaze at the water and Omar could scowl at any Monrovian sailor who tried to come too close.

Now, Omar's quiet friendship with the elf became a problem. Howat would scale the outer wall of the palace and climb right into Omar's new offices, and Omar would find him playing with light in the surgery. Lifting up gleaming surgical implements to see how the light played off the walls in a different way, as if he were conducting strange little experiments no one else knew anything about.

Omar would have been fine with this. But Hil'ki, who did not like the palace, was not fine with it. And as summer approached Hil'ki became shorter-tempered, for he was trying to plan Yann and Tai'vi's wedding now. He had no time to do that, run the medical practice, and watch Howat.

He often gave the silent elf spectacular dressing-downs when Omar returned him home at the end of the day.

"You are too old to do this!" he would cry, stamping his foot. "You and I and Haalki and Hennat -- we are all not so far from our pre-dinkalas! It has been nearly _fifty years_ of having to watch you like you are a child, Howat!"

Howat had nothing to say in response, for Howat, as a rule, had nothing to say. Hil'ki would end up miserable and green-faced, annoyed at himself more than Howat.

Amazingly, though, never annoyed with Omar.

"Why would I be annoyed?" he said one night, in their bed. "You are his brother now too, yes? And a better brother than I am, Omar. I get so _angry_ at him sometimes. You never do. You might be the one he loves best of all."

"I love him too," Omar said truthfully. "I love all of you."

He meant that. Ladolat made him understand what a small, weak thing he was, and he was grateful for that. But the elves -- the elves had made him believe for a short time that he could be _better_. Not just Omar the failure. But Omar who had a community, a home. People to help, and be helped by. 

Now he knew that having these things meant little, when it came to his own worth. Now he knew that he carried his own faults about, and always would. But even so. 

Ladolat might have his gratitude and awe. But Hil'ki and the elves had his heart.

Now Hil'ki smiled, and even if his smiles weren't as infectious as the prince's, they were far more valuable to Omar. He pulled Omar in and kissed him roundly. Omar delighted in that kiss, in the fresh taste of his spouse, in Hil'ki's light form in his arms. He pulled off the elf's coarse trousers. Cupped the round little arse.

Hil'ki spread his legs very amenably. His little pucker, when Omar put a finger to it, was already greased, showing that the elf had thoughtfully prepared Omar's favorite hole already. It was the work of moments for Omar to reach into his medical bag for the salve and grease himself up, too.

Hil'ki's arse was always too tight. Omar never failed to cause sounds of pain to slip out of his spouse, when he pushed in. But Hil'ki had by now made clear that he did not mind the pain. Not if it was Omar. Omar pressed kisses to his small breasts to soothe him, as he started to work his hips. Filling up his beloved. Hil'ki could take his big, engorged cock like a champion, never complaining, always so tight and good around Omar.

Omar stroked the brown little neck. Trembling. Like a bird's. He found the little cocklet and stroked that too. Hil'ki gave a whine.

As always, when Omar succeeded in hitting his good spot, he went boneless and needy. This was Omar's favorite way to fuck him, when he could make Hil'ki just a gasping thing. Crying out his name. Omar could fuck sheer sensation right into him, could fuck enough that Hil'ki drooled and even his empty cunt glistened. Omar plunged in and out of his pretty spouse, and knew that every part of Hil'ki's body narrowed to the feel of Omar's large, ugly cock. Pleasuring the elf. 

"Omar!" Hil'ki sobbed when he came, arms around Omar's neck, legs around Omar's hips. Giving himself up to Omar completely. Letting Omar fuck him until Omar's name was the only word he knew. "O-omar!"

He was so gone he hardly noticed when Omar pumped him full of come. Though Hil'ki never had heats, he was as dazed as an elf in heat. As sweet, sated, and easy, his hole twitching around the big prick that gave him what he needed. 

Omar was just a man, but he could do this. He could do this, at least, for his Hil'ki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is Omar in a good place? No. A license doesn’t fix depression. 
> 
> Plus, is there something weird going on that is maybe exacerbating all his worst issues? That is possible. Entirely possible.
> 
> Also, unrelated, but for everyone who read the earlier installments in this series and liked original fantasy-Victorian universes full of angst and filth, may I recommend ao3 user RosesAndLace's [The Infertilization](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25490971/chapters/61836817)? I'm finding that whole world very intriguing!


	8. The Prince of Jewel Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter where things get real bad.

That summer, when Tai'vi officially took Hil'ki's role in the circus and it was just Omar and Hil'ki again in the ramshackle house, a letter came from Dariya.

Omar's youngest sister. The baby. She had been a baby when Omar had left, a chubby little girl with her hair in fat black plaits. But now she wrote briskly and firmly as any general. 

_Faiz tells us you are wed to a jungle elf. We must meet this jungle elf. Haroun has written that these elves are chaste, humble beings, and I am pleased that you, ever the best of us, have finally found a bride that suits you. I will prepare a suite of rooms for the two of you in my husband's house, should you agree to come to Hakash, and we will entertain you both for two weeks or more if that pleases you._

But this didn't please Omar. This terrified him. He did not want to see Hakash again, the white-walled city of prayer and mutilated bodies. He did not want to see Hakash ever.

And, in any case, he was far too busy to leave Praknita. He had two apprentices now, a human apprentice and an elf apprentice. He had two additional practices for them to work in -- one in the ragged district and one in the scholar's district. He was still bound to Ladolat three times per week, as well.

Yet Hil'ki, when Omar showed him the letter, seemed to actually consider Dariya's offer.

"If Ladolat is so good, he will understand you wanting to visit your family. And Torrat and Rushil can manage without their master physician haranguing them for a few weeks. Or is this about that _uokan'i_ that killed your sister?" Hil'ki asked.

He asked not this unkindly, but simply in a practical, no-nonsense way.

Omar still squirmed before his gaze. They were in the kitchen, washing plates, and Omar had to put his plate down lest it slip out of his clumsy, trembling hands and break.

"Look, love. Would you want to see D'laniaa again?" he managed.

That was where Hil'ki's parents had been murdered. So surely Hil'ki would understand. There was no fixing pain that great. There was only -- avoiding it. 

Hil'ki gazed at the soapy water in the washing bucket for a moment.

"Yes," he said simply, startling Omar with the answer. "You know some D'lani are trying to return, yes? Amayi has been giving money to that cause for years now."

"What?" Omar said. "What cause? The cause of returning to a place where the Monrovians will enslave you? Why?"

Hil'ki scowled.

"If D'laniaa weren't controlled by Monrovia, we could return," he said.

"I'm pretty sure it will always be controlled by Monrovia," Omar said.

They could both be practical and no-nonsense. Omar could do that too.

Hil'ki was undeterred.

"A great elf, Kouvi Ul'la-Yenat-Morovia. He came to speak at Uoleyi's house three Rice-Days ago, when you were at the palace--"

"Kouvi Who-Kills-Monrovians?" Omar translated. "I'm sorry. Do we really think we should be going to see speeches by someone named that? You do realize that Uoleyi, and all of you, live right next to the docks, yes? The Monrovian-controlled docks."

Hil'ki flushed.

"He is a great elf!"

"Well, he has a terrible clutchname," Omar said. 

"That's only a nickname! He's of the Weds-Leaves-to-Sea--"

"The royal clutch? I thought most of that clutch was dead. How do you know Uoleyi wasn't hosting some kind of mad imposter--"

Hil'ki dunked the plate he was cleaning in the washing bucket, with force.

"Kouvi has been saying for months, in all the elf settlements in Irvidni, and for years to the elves in Ordania, that the D'Nara have returned! And the D'Nara, they recognize him! My cousin Raliyi, he joined up four months ago, Omar, and was put to work on one of the boats. He brought Kouvi here, and he says it is all true! The D'Nara are risen, Omar! And one of our princes lives!"

Omar stared at his mad little spouse, completely aghast.

"The D'Nara. The naiads. The elves that live at the bottom of the ocean. Have boats? Why do they need boats? Water elves do not need boats."

Hil'ki just kept scowling at him.

"Boats can carry cannons, and cannons make it easier to take back D'laniaa," he said.

"To _what_?" cried Omar. 

"Just because Praknita and Hakash are pleased to be ruled doesn't mean we all are," Hil'ki now said mulishly. "Many have gone to join the pirates, Omar, to fight for our home. To take back what the Monrovians stole. I have considered it myself--"

"You want to leave me for a _mad pirate prince_?" Omar yelled. 

In his wild gesticulations, he upset the washing bucket. Soapy water spilled over them and the plates clattered out. But Omar did not care. His heart was beating wildly. No. _No_.

Hil'ki, strangely, did not seem upset. He bent to gather the plates up.

"Of course not, Omar! It is just a stupid dream. I love you. I don't want to leave you. But I am telling you that, for the elves, even if D'laniaa is a place that it hurts to think about, most of us would rather die trying to get back than live denying the memory of it. Yorrat plans to join up, you know--"

"To be," Omar said. "A pirate."

Hil'ki just looked up. Sighed. 

"I would go if I were not married," he said simply. "But I have you. And we have a home. One I won't trade even for the home I lost. But you, Omar, you can have both your old home and this one. I think you're lucky, Omar. I really do. I think you should consider visiting Hakash."

-

Omar did not consider that. What Omar did do was agonize over the fact that his Hil'ki, his practical, considerate, normally-reasonable little spouse, was apparently some sort of closet revolutionary. 

He fucked Hil'ki roughly three nights in a row. He didn't mean to. Didn't mean to bruise the elf, to leave him crying out more in pain than pleasure. But he couldn't seem to control himself, all his anxiety and wretchedness and self-disgust narrowing to the point where he thrust into Hil'ki so hard and fast that the little elf hiccuped and bit his lip, and on the third night actually requested that Omar please be kinder.

Omar pulled out of him entirely, horrified. It was like coming back to himself, badly, from a night drunk on honey-wine. Hil'ki looked crumpled and small underneath him, curling into himself.

"It's alright," the elf told him. "Just not so hard, Omar. Yes?"

Omar felt repulsive. His stomach heaved. 

He was less even than a man. He was as cruel and awful as the demons. He was an as-yet-undiscovered demon. The Omar-demon, a thing lower than any creature Haroun had assigned to the hells.

He fled the bed, and had to be coaxed back by a worried Hil'ki.

And his low feelings did not improve the next day. The next day, at the palace, he saw a man who _always_ made him feel low.

Tarek El Sattar. Once of Hakash, like Omar, but now the Master Physician of Praknita.

Only he was permitted to treat the Princess Salina.

She was so dainty. So small. Small and lithe as an elf, with thick dark hair and huge dark eyes. Her skin glowed as if from some inner light. She hardly ever spoke, but was simply an attendant shadow for Ladolat, walking three steps behind him and sometimes saying, with pious gratitude, "Praise you, prince. Thank you for all you do for me and our city."

Omar thought she was quite as old as Ladolat. People seemed to indicate that she was, when asked about her. But she looked very young, as perhaps all the royal line did. Tarek El Sattar always announced that she was healthy as an ox, to the smiling relief of the prince, but sometimes she would cut herself while working at her fine Monrovian sewing machine, or trip and fall onto a jewel set in the floor. Then the Master Physician would be called to bandage her.

"Praise your foresight in knowing she might have been hurt on this day," Tarek simpered, to the prince. "How lucky our beautiful Princess Salina is to have you."

"So lucky," sighed Princess Salina. "Thank you, my wonderful Ladolat."

Ladolat smiled. Preened.

Omar said, "So you'll be using this examination room for another thirty minutes, then? Because I have a few kitchen maids I was going to tend to. But no, it's fine. It's fine. I'll just put the last one in the surgery."

Then, as an afterthought, because it seemed to be the done thing in the palace: "Praise Ladolat for such a wonderful surgery."

Thirty minutes later, Tarek was indeed done bandaging Princess Salina -- or, more accurately, heaping praise on Ladolat -- and came to the surgery to snipe at Omar.

"So," he said.

"So what?" Omar demanded.

The kitchen maid had bruised her eye somehow, rather horribly. Crocus salve was bringing the swelling down, but there was also a cut on her cheekbone. She bore Omar dabbing at it with the customary placid strength of all the royal servants, and only said, now, "Praise Ladolat you are here, good doctor."

"Thank you," said Omar, though, really, he didn't think he was much help to her. To anyone. Still, Hil'ki would have told him to take pride in being thanked like this.

Unfortunately, Tarek also said, "Thank you," at the same time.

"She was talking to me!" Omar snapped.

"Ah. You. The drunk who built a practice treating elven whores, who no doubt paid you with their diseased cunts. Remind me again why the darkness of oblivion and poverty didn't claim you, Barakat? It _will_ claim you--"

No doubt it would. Omar hardly blinked, for the truth made a poor sort of insult.

"Haroun did say the earth came from darkness," he only said, reasoning it out. "And that someday the darkness will swallow all earthly things. Including your greedy, backwards little mind, El Sattar."

"Don't tell _me_ what Haroun said! I was first in my class at the holy academy when you were a putrid stone weighing down your unlucky mother's womb, Barakat!"

"First in your class? I didn't hear of it," Omar said, his mind quite blank for some reason. Blank and slick, as if the Master Physician not only couldn't really insult him. He couldn't even _touch_ him. Omar was almost starting to enjoy feeling as low as he did, he really was.

He added, blithely, "Perhaps you did not bribe the holy men quite enough money to secure yourself a lasting reputation."

"You little _snake_!" roared Tarek, and lunged for him, but now Ladolat's voice came into the surgery.

"My good men," the prince called out, the sound strangely loud, somehow able to overcome the ever-present hush of the palace. "Please. Do not fight. Do I not employ you both? Rule you both? Care for you both? You pain me when you forget how I have chosen both of you to serve me and my people."

"Praise Ladolat," laughed the kitchen maid.

"Come here, both of you," Ladolat commanded.

Omar protested, for the kitchen maid still needed some more treatment. But she waved him off with another laugh, as if it was no matter. And Tarek had already rushed out to attend to Ladolat. Omar did not want to be left behind. 

Ladolat was lounging behind the desk in the main room, all the jeweled light of the palace playing on his face. Looking as though it radiated from him. Salina sat opposite him, embroidering a golden cloth and quite unconcerned by anything but the motions of her needle. Ladolat leaned forward on the fine carved desk and looked at them both.

"Must you be so wrapped up in your rivalry?" he said. "It is pointless. I have made you both royal physicians. And yet you snipe, as if you think only of who will advance over the other--"

Omar protested this. So did Tarek El Sattar.

Ladolat smiled that jewel-bright, even smile that had just as much force as Nasir's tight, crooked smile had had.

"Stop thinking of yourselves," he instructed. "Think of _me_. Yes? I am your prince. You are only anything at all because of me. Without me, you would be working for pennies, men with the lives of grasping worms. The sort of life most men have. Now, what do you say?"

"Praise Ladolat," Tarek said at once. Omar echoed it, feeling a strange mutinous feeling in his chest. He liked the prince, he truly did, but he did not like being dressed down like a child. And now he felt uneasy, for Ladolat was reaching down to adjust something below the desk.

"And you, pretty bitch?" he said languidly. 

Amayi's response was instantaneous.

"Praise you, Ladolat--"

"Very good," crooned the prince. "You know your place, like a little monkey. No, don't lick me again. Now you will come with me to my gardens and take it in your jewel-colored cunt, to keep it just as sore and pretty as I like to see it."

-

Amayi waited for him that day, to walk him home to Hil'ki.

He looked distressed. He didn't wear it the way Omar's spouse did. Hil'ki was an energetic creature, and when he was unhappy Omar could see it in his fluttering hands, his zig-zag walk. Amayi did not zig-zag. He glided, implacable, face still.

"I need you to help me," he said tightly. "I--my chest has started to swell again. And my belly. It might be Ladolat's."

Omar agreed at once, for whoever the father was, if the mother did not want this clutch, then the eventual children were only likely to be born into lives of pain and suffering.

As they all were. The wisest thing, the best thing he could do, was to stop that before it even began.

"Thank you," Amayi said, clearly not knowing the turn of his thoughts. "Omar. You are a good man. Let me advise you a bit, if I may?"

Privately, while Omar liked Amayi, he did not think that the elf should be giving anyone advice. Amayi had no skills and little learning, and was employed as a bed-slave, submitting himself to atrocious treatment for pay. He was raising two children alone, often forced to leave them with Hil'ki or his own drunken relli. He was in love with a demon.

But he was Hil'ki's dearest friend, and Omar -- sour though his mind was -- had no desire to belittle or offend him. 

"If your advice is to stop working at the palace, well, Hil'ki has advanced every possible argument for that, and I'm afraid they don't move me--"

"You should go to Hakash," Amayi said at once. "Hil'ki says you have family there. You should find a way to go, and take him and everyone you can with you, but you won't find a way, Omar. Because when Ladolat draws you in, that's it. You're caught. Sirit used to talk of taking me to the Eeyanu--"

"I assure you, you wouldn't have wanted to be taken _there_ \--" Omar said, thinking of the cultists, the false gods, the golems and other demons that infested that barren desert. Even reaching it required crossing the eternal devouring darkness of the Rojnari. 

"I should like to be anywhere but Praknita," Amayi said bitterly. "But I never shall be. I am in Ladolat's orbit. To try to leave would be like a star wishing it could be wrenched from its course. And since we are in the same boat, Omar, you must listen to me. You were almost flippant with him today. He did not like it. He told you as much. You must never, ever do that again, Omar--"

"Flippant?" Omar said, aghast. Had he been? Had he failed at that, too? "The prince and I get on very well--"

Amayi spoke over him, determined to say his piece.

"He detects any small bit of rudeness, and he does not respond well, Omar. Sirit was rude to him. The day before he -- he changed. One day he was teaching me to weave scale-cloaks, gifting me little clay men. The next -- the next it was like he hated me."

Omar had to bite his tongue, for Amayi certainly had things hard enough, and was likely in an emotional state over his second pregnancy. 

Still, to be compared to that -- that _thing_ Amayi professed to be in love with -- hit a dangerous, wounded place inside Omar. Had he not just been thinking himself no better than a demon? Had he not just been considering how hurtful, how useless, he had turned out to be after all?

"I think Sirit was probably always rude," Omar bit out, just to say something. "Because Sirit is a demon. I am not. I am _not_. But your advice is -- is noted."

-

Life went on, summer wrapped up and went on its way, and Omar was busy both in the palace and in his ramshackle practice. 

He was a wealthy man now, mostly thanks to Ladolat. His weekly pay dwarfed anything he might make in the practice, and after he dealt with Amayi's pregnancy he half-considered why on earth he even worked the remaining four days of the week. Torrat and Rushil could do this -- the desperate, tight-lipped task of tending the poor -- as well as he did. Perhaps Omar ought to get a third apprentice, too. One to work by the elven district. 

Other people, who would perhaps be better at all this than he was. Once he had enjoyed his work, he thought. Now, now that he was a master physician, he realized how very pointless it was. 

But perhaps he needed to work at the practice. Hil'ki would not use the money Omar earned at the palace. Only the practice money. The palace money he encouraged Omar to use, to spend on himself, to send expensive railway letters to Doctor Clement Nenge and to buy himself rare medical books and park permits and better surgical implements. 

"That money is yours, Omar," Hil'ki said. "But the money we make together -- that is what is ours. That is we will put to our household."

Omar thought he knew the reason for this. These days, the other elves often came by with collection plates for the cause of Kouvi Ul'la-Yenat-Morovia. This led to many, many fights they carefully avoided having. Hil'ki dealt with it by taking only from that pot of money _he_ earned, and offering that -- not any of the money earned by Omar. This made Omar uncomfortable. He wasn't sure he liked the thought of segregating their accounts. It did not seem to be the way spouses should work. Not proper spouses, not when the man was the breadwinner, as he ought to be. As Omar had consistently failed to be, for Hil'ki had worked relentlessly from the start. 

No wonder their marriage failed in this. Even though Haroun said that a man and his wife should draw from the same well. And the elves said something like that too, only their saying had to do with nests or something.

But Hil'ki was unmoved by sayings. Unmoved, too, by Omar's reasoned arguments about the political dangers of giving to blatantly anti-Monrovian causes had no effect on Hil'ki. Hil'ki would only reply that he was the elf best-positioned to give, as the spouse to a successful human doctor. And he told Omar, point blank, that he would not let his kinsmen down in their effort to restore their homeland. 

On one River-Day, in the thick of the balmy winter, the best season in Praknita, Omar came home and Hil'ki was not there. 

This by itself was not alarming. Hil'ki had many friends to visit -- all of his fellow elves, the Prakash family up the street, even the Omnion demon Mr. Fig Tree, although as of late Hil'ki had told Omar that Mr. Fig Tree had embarked upon a stupendous and foolhardy letter-delivering mission as a matter of pride.

No, what alarmed Omar was Haalki casually mentioning that Hil'ki had gone off with two friends from the circus -- George the Drukk and Tsisk the Eelie -- to Mr. Putnam's base of operations here in Praknita.

Putnam's House of Pleasures. Where, in a day, a little elf might earn enough on his own account, by enterprising and enthusiastic use of his cunt, to purchase ten cannons for the ships of Kouvi-Who-Kills-Monrovians.

Omar felt dread and rage flicker in him, when he realized that.

He paid for a rickshaw to take him quickly to the bright, painted-wood brothel, so much less impressive after Ladolat's palace. So gaudy. So lurid, tasteless, and immoral. Omar could not believe he had ever approached this place with anything other than moral outrage. He had been such a very worthless man then, as he was now, but he had not understood it. Had not realized what it was, to enter a place like this. 

Now he lived more like a true disciple of Haroun, as a married man with eyes only for his little spouse. So he felt his eyes opened to the garish ugliness of this whorehouse, the visceral evil that Hil'ki sold himself to.

He knew to go to the green door, but there was no one in the hall. When he wrenched that door open he found nothing but a little closet with cleaning supplies. But that did not mean Hil'ki was not working in some other room. Perhaps the cannon fund demanded he use his mouth, his arse. Bare his beautiful elf body to men, let them paw at his round little tits and spend on the soft, delicate skin of his face.

Omar was shaking with fury when he pounded on the latched double-door to the scam artist's private quarters. 

"Hil'ki!" he shouted. "Where is my spouse?"

His spouse answered the door. 

Hil'ki was still in the simple dark shirt and trousers he favored for working in the practice, entirely clothed. He smelled like medical disinfectant and arrowroot healing tonic. He blinked up at Omar, perplexed. 

Omar, despite the anger that was pounding in him, felt a twinge of something else.

Embarrassment. A cool and small voice, so very small he could easily ignore it, said: _Well, Omar. You're a bit stupid._

But then he caught sight of the poppy pipe in Hil'ki's hand.

"You are smoking?" he demanded, desperate to seize on anything to justify the anger that was still curling its smoky way through him, choking him. 

"Just one pipe," Hil'ki said, scrunching up his nose in confusion. "Omar, what are you--"

"I could have needed you at home! And you are a master physician's spouse, you know. I work for the prince. I do not need people to know you are frequenting a brothel--"

"I have never hidden the fact that I used to be a whore," Hil'ki said, plainly, taking a drag of his pipe.

Two hands appeared on the door above his head. Two right hands, belonging to Tsisk, that colorless, noxious demon that Omar so disliked.

"Darling, how charming. He follows you like a puppy everywhere, even now that you're married."

Hil'ki huffed his pipe.

"I don't know why he's here. Omar, do you need something? I thought you would still be at the palace."

"My sister works at the palace," Tsisk said now. One additional colorless hand was gently bringing forward a tray with a lamp on it. To heat the poppy. Tsisk dangled this before Omar's spouse, to tempt him. Intoxicate him, which was of course what demons did. 

"Or she did work there, back when she was speaking to me," Tsisk continued briskly. "She stopped speaking to me the summer Naj quit the circus--"

"Perhaps she didn't want to associate with a degenerate," Omar snapped. 

He grabbed Hil'ki's slender wrist and tugged him forward. Hil'ki yelled. Omar knew he should be grateful that only a bit of poppy-smoking was happening, but, well. He wasn't grateful. He was worried. He and Hil'ki had never discussed Hil'ki giving up poppy -- not any more than they had discussed Omar giving up honey-wine -- but Omar had thought it was understood. Such vices had nearly destroyed him, back when they had had nothing to lose. And now they were a master physician and the spouse of a master physician, and he could not risk anyone knowing that -- despite all that -- he was inside him the same old Omar the drunk, who had married a poppy-smoking little whore he did not deserve.

Hil'ki was not as much a failure as he was. Even with the whoring. Even with the poppy. But he was used to a low standard of living. An immoral one. Selling himself, watching his friends sell themselves. All his people living in hovels. But it did not have to be that way. Neither he nor Omar needed to revel in or even reveal their problems with intoxicants, whoring, or poverty. 

"Omar! You are hurting me! What is _wrong_ with you?" Hil'ki cried, as Omar tugged him back downstairs. 

"I do not want you coming here," Omar bit out. "Why must you always consort with demons?"

"My friends are not demons!" Hil'ki said hotly. "Omar! Let me go! And apologize to Tsisk!"

"I will not apologize to a creature not even fit for association with his own demon family--"

"Then what are you?" Hil'ki cried out. " _You_ didn't want to write your family when I met you--"

Omar nearly hit him. He didn't. He kept dragging him to the street instead. But it was a near thing.

Omar knew what it was to fall, to fail. He'd been a worthless failure for years. And now that he was respected and worthy, a master physician, he could only fail more, fail harder. They both could. Omar felt disgraced for the company his spouse kept, for the causes his spouse gave to. And for his own weakness, too. For treating Hil'ki as he had Nasir, loving Hil'ki so much that he indulged even Hil'ki's poorest choices. 

Somehow he managed to drag Hil'ki a full street over before the elf shoved him off. 

Then Hil'ki stood looking at him, white-faced and trembling.

"Omar," he said, his voice thick. "Do not ever do that again. Do not ever touch me like that. Or call my friends degenerate--"

"That is what he is!" Omar cried.

"Then what am _I_?" Hil'ki spat. 

"Better than you were," Omar said, the words tumbling out of him like bile he could not keep down. "The only one who uses your cunt now is me."

Something occurred to him. Just the thing to get Hil'ki to a place Putnam's House of Pleasures could not reach. A place even the great Kouvi Monrovian-Killer couldn't reach.

A place Omar didn't really want to go. But perhaps he was meant to return home. For Hil'ki. To improve Hil'ki. He loved Hil'ki so much, and yet for weeks now he had felt as though that love was getting them nowhere, making them no better than they'd been to start with. Omar felt so -- so _empty_. Why was his marriage not making him less empty? Why was Hil'ki so wrapped up in his demon friends, his little causes? Could he not see how they stood on the brink of this vast, ugly emptiness and ruin?

"Listen," Omar said. "We should -- we should go see my sister, yes? Things have been difficult lately, with me working at the palace, and it's true that I was hesitant, but I think Hakash has much to show you, so perhaps in the summer--"

Hil'ki stared at him like Omar was a bug crawling on the side of his soup bowl.

"I used to spend my summers working," he forced out. "Putting on shows, as an acrobat and sometimes a whore. And it was hard, Omar. But in the circus I could fly, did you know that? I was with my family, and for a moment every night, my brothers and I could leap and soar and _fly_. And I would rather spend the summer doing that, then sit trapped at your beck and call, as your _helpmeet_!"

-

He apologized the next day. He felt lowest when they fought, when it was dramatic. A better man would have handled taking Hil'ki from the brothel with reasonableness, and peace. And when they fought it took a toll on the rest of the family. Yann looked tense, and Hennat always on the verge of tears. Tai'vi's eyes would go wide and Yorrat's shoulders would hunch. Practical Haalki would always find an excuse to leave at once and so stay out of it.

And Howat, in particular, was upset by it.

The next day he trailed Omar like a puppy to the palace, plainly nervous over the tension Omar and Hil'ki had brought home the night before. Omar let him. He loved Howat with the same uncomplicated filial love he'd once reserved for Nasir. Loved this quiet, strange little brother who meant well, who had walked with Omar all over Praknita when Omar had been nothing but a drunkard.

He let Howat play his light-games in the surgery all day, making sure to pause his rounds to bring the elf food from the palace kitchens. He did not think it would cause any harm. Howat, for all his strangeness, understood how to handle the surgical tools almost instinctively, and never hurt himself.

When Omar was done treating a palace guard for what seemed to be a mild case of lumbago, he returned to the medical wing to collect Howat and take him home.

The elf was backed against the wall of the surgery. Ladolat leaned over him.

"What are you?" the prince was saying, with fascination in his tone. "Why won't you speak? Speak, elf! Praise me! All you are is a jungle elf, and you should know to acknowledge your betters!"

Howat, clearly uncomfortable, passed his green-tipped fingers over his cheeks, turning his face away.

Omar, alarmed, hastened forward. He had to intervene, to fix this. This was his fault for not thinking of how the elf's silence might offend Ladolat.

"Forgive me, my prince. This is my brother in law. He never speaks--"

"Not even to praise his ruler?" Ladolat demanded.

"No, my lord," Omar said. He managed to edge his way in between Ladolat and the anxious Howat, who was breathing hard. Omar could do this only with difficulty. Ladolat was shorter than Omar, but surprisingly hard to move.

"This is indolence! I have commanded him, and he refuses my commands!"

"He cannot help but to refuse," Omar stammered out. "He is not like other elves, my prince, nor like most men. His mind works differently. It does not pour itself into the grooves of speech--"

Ladolat's grey eyes were cold. Alarmingly cold. And he was smiling, but not smiling like Nasir once had, like Hil'ki sometimes did, not smiling in a way Omar liked. This smile was filled with a strange, flat light, somehow.

"Then he will need to be fixed. Trained to praise me--"

"There is nothing about him that needs fixing!" Omar snapped, worried now for Howat and therefore unthinking. "It is simply how he is--"

The flat smile wavered for a moment, then fixed on Omar. The flat light in the grey eyes gave Omar a horrible, queasy feeling. 

It was somehow not a human light. It wasn't even an elf light. It was like the purposeless light of the eleventh hell, the hell Haroun had told men was the worst of all.

"Are you correcting me?" Prince Ladolat asked softly. "Omar. I, who have been so kind to you. Who am your ruler. Your _better_. You do not praise me, Omar. And I. Do not. Like that."

Omar was a big man, but he felt small very often, especially lately. Only he'd never felt so small as he did now. He reached back and grabbed hold of Howat, not wanting to let Howat go, and said, sounding like a pitiful coward, "F-forgive me, Prince. I will do better. But I must get this boy to his family, yes? Then I will make it up to you--"

All he could think was that they had to get out. Him and Howat. Now. He didn't know where he found the strength to shove past Ladolat, but he did find it, and then they were running through the silent jeweled halls. The light here seemed so eerie, all of a sudden. As if they were being pierced by every beam.

At the bend which led to the main hall, they stumbled into Amayi. The beautiful elf was evidently coming to meet Omar, to walk home with him. Amayi caught sight of the terror-look that was no doubt on Omar's face, the look of madness and instinct, and said, "Omar, wha--"

"I was rude to him," Omar blurted out.

He had not realized that it -- that it would make the prince seem so _wrong_. So oddly monstrous.

Amayi had known all along. The pretty elf went white.

"Get out," he said. "Omar, we must get out--"

As one, he, Omar, and Howat tripped forwards, lurched into a near-run. Amayi in the lead.

A tall, red-tipped form turned abruptly into the main hall right in front of them, and backhanded Amayi. The elf fell as Omar gave a shout. 

Sirit smirked at him. 

From behind them, Ladolat cleared his throat.

Omar turned slowly. He could not put Howat behind him, away from Ladolat, for Ladolat's pet demon was right there. He settled for holding even more tightly to the now-shivering Howat, and gathering up Amayi as well. Holding them both, for he was the largest and could shield them a bit.

"I'm sorry," he stammered out, to the prince, meaning it. He had never felt sorrier. "We're all sorry."

"For what?" Ladolat said silkily.

"Not praising you," Omar said at once. 

"Oh?" 

Ladolat arched a flawless white eyebrow.

"How funny, Omar Barakat of Hakash. You are sorry for that. Not for killing the babe I gifted to that whore in your arms? And you, Amayi jungle-slut. You're not sorry for sleeping with my Sirit, when I did not give you license to do that? I would have thought you would be, since I have given you to the roughest men I could as a punishment ever since. 

"And this dumb little idiot, he is not sorry to inconvenience me, and cost me my favorite whore and my favorite physician?"

"W-what?" Omar managed, the pit in his stomach widening, growing dark and awful as a Rojnari ravine.

And he couldn't move. Why couldn't he move? He wanted to, but it was like his body wasn't answering him. 

And it was so -- so bright. The light from the jewels on the walls and floor was growing brighter. Even Howat was whining at it. Omar tried to close his eyes and couldn't. He had to bear the cold, flat, burning pain, and felt tears collecting in the corners of his eyes to trail down his cheeks.

"I told you," came Ladolat's cold voice. "That my father, Prince Hajari, met an adder in the hunting park, and that the adder told him how to find an angel. I may have stretched the truth just the smallest bit, Omar Barakat. You see, I _was_ the adder. And I _am_ the angel. And when I was done with Hajari, well. By then I was Hajari, too."

The light was piercing into Omar. Into his mouth, into his eyes. Omar could no longer feel the elves in his arms, could no longer feel anything but the cold, awful jewel-light, penetrating all of him. Forcing out what was left of his self, making him empty. This was why he had felt so _empty_. Something here leached him out of himself.

And trapped whatever small, worthless bit of personhood he had left in the jewel-beams, the horrible ropes with which he now realized Ladolat must bind every single creature he believed to be beneath him.

"Lucky Hajari," Ladolat crooned. "And lucky you, Omar Barakat. To be made light. To have your worthless human form filled with the light of an angel. And now, Omar, now this plain meat sack of yours will do what I like. Now it will praise and praise and praise me."

-

To say that Omar 'came to' would be incorrect.

There was no _to_. There was only the light-place. The cold, flat hell of the light palace, and Omar's selfhood bleeding out of his body as if he were drunk again on honey-wine. He tried to stand, and could not find his legs. All was uncertain. He groped about, and felt nothing.

Past the ugly, overpowering wash of light, he could make out two forms. Howat. Amayi. Seeming to stumble up, as he was trying to do. But when he tried to help them up, he could not. He passed through them. He was a ghost, a thing made of the light-beams now.

They were no longer people. They were echoes and light, trapped outside of their bodies. They were like sounds that could not be expressed. Omar gave a cry of horror, and felt it swallowed up by the tall ceilings above them.

Before him stood his real body. He could not touch it. It was bowing, bowing to Ladolat.

A small form slithered close to them now. A snake. An adder.

Another creature reduced to a beam of light. Sirit threw off his snake cloak and then he was before them as an elf, only he was just as washed out as they were.

When he spoke, it was with great effort. It seemed as though he was shouting, his chest was heaving, but the light -- Omar could see the light piercing the sounds, now. Sirit's words were shouts that were reduced, in the space between them, to little more than whispers.

"Amayi! My Amayi!"

"S-Sirit?" Amayi managed, just as low and hoarse. He put a green-tipped hand to his throat, as if he could not believe that all the effort of screaming his beloved's name produced just that pitiful sound.

"He has you," Sirit forced out. "That fucking son of a bitch. He got you."

-

When they did not come home for two days, Hil'ki came to the palace.

They watched Ladolat receive him.

Ladolat, and the empty vessels he commanded. The bodies he'd emptied of selfhood, stuffed full of his empty jewel-light.

"What are you doing here?" the false Omar said coldly, as the real Omar screamed and pleaded and was not heard.

Hil'ki blinked at him. At this light-golem parading around as a flesh and blood man.

"Omar! You have not come home. And Howat and Amayi--"

"Come home?" the false Omar laughed. "To the elf district? That fetid slum? Come on. Surely you didn't think you could keep me there forever."

Behind him, the false Amayi tinkled out a laugh. He was sitting on Ladolat's lap, petting the prince's hair.

"Praise Ladolat that neither of us have to go back there, Omar!"

"Amayi," Hil'ki said, astonished. "That is your home. That is where your babies live--"

The false Amayi sneered. The real Amayi, a light-shadow, cried out in his anger and upset, but no one but the other ghosts could see that Amayi.

"I am not going to waste my life on two-thirds of a low-caste D'Sula clutch," the false Amayi said. "You raise them. My little gift to you, Hil'ki, since you're not up to the task of having your own--"

Hil'ki reeled back as if struck. Omar -- the real Omar -- howled at the expression of pain on his face.

 _He will know your thoughts!_ Sirit had shouted at them. _When you are standing in his light, he has access to your minds, and knows everything about your lives. It's what he uses to weaken you before he claims you!_

And so from here things only got worse. For now Hil'ki turned to Omar again, the false Omar, and that Omar just smiled.

"I'm a royal physician, and you -- you are a whore. No, my dear. I'm afraid this has been building for a while. We simply are not compatible. You will always be a slum-dweller, a friend to the lower castes. And that rather ruins my prospects, don't you think? But what really decided it for me, if you must know, was finding you back in the brothel--"

"Perhaps that is the right place for him," Ladolat cut in now, as tears formed in Hil'ki's eyes.

"Praise you, my prince," said the false Omar at once. "That's just right. Hil'ki, you said it yourself. You will never be a helpmeet to me. You are a barren, poppy-addled slut--"

"No!" Hil'ki said, rounding on the prince. "What are you doing to him? This is not him. This is not my Omar! And that is not Amayi, either--"

But now Ladolat twisted the knife. Now the pretty golden-haired elf behind the false Omar came forward, smiling, even as his invisible light-double shook his head wildly in despair.

"I can't believe we can finally tell him," said Howat's body, speaking for the first time in any of their lives.

Hil'ki took in a sharp breath. Stepped back, stunned.

"Omar is in love with _me_ ," the false Howat said. "We talk all the time, you see. I simply don't talk to you, because you treat me terribly, don't you? Call me a child. Scold me."

"You may be a child, Howat, but, praise Ladolat, at least you are not a bare branch!" the false Amayi said snidely.

Hil'ki covered his mouth with a hand to muffle his sob. This was pointless. The light, the terrible light, dimmed all sounds and all real life here. Reduced everything to simply Ladolat's puppet shows.

"This is false," Hil'ki whimpered. "It is. I know it is. It is you, Prince Ladolat--"

But he was faltering. Omar could see it, the defeat in his eyes. Omar had felt it. 

The sense of everything good, everything right, washing away. Only to be replaced by self-hatred. Failure. It would feel like clarity, but it was not clarity. It was a trap.

The false Omar smiled, knowing this perhaps as well as the real Omar did.

"What did you think -- that I would settle for you?" he said, and his voice was the same confident, even voice that Ladolat always used. A voice that seemed to order and structure the very world. 

"I don't love you," Omar-Ladolat said, and made it true. "Amayi pities you. And Howat has been trailing me to the palace for months in order to show me how much better he is for me than you. He can give me children. And he understands his place in my life."

Hil'ki's expression was ragged and broken. Omar saw him break, and broke with him, screaming out apologies Hil'ki could not hear.

"Get out of here, before you embarass yourself," commanded the false Omar.

Hil'ki, sobbing, went.

Ladolat laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed, as the three new puppets he'd made himself praised him just the way he liked. 

"Oh, Omar Barakat!" the prince said wildly. "That is the most fun I have had in _years_! Showing an arrogant low-caste elf how very little he is worth!

"You know what is so wonderful about you, Omar Barakat? You _knew_ you were worthless. You've always known it, always felt how small you are. You have a pitiful opinion of yourself, Omar Barakat, as you should! It made you want to be more, and yet know you could not be. It made you so easy to convince of how things should work. Of my superiority! Oh, Omar Barakat! You and I, will have so! Much! _Fun_!"


	9. Abandoned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter, in which elven society is pretty shitty to Hil'ki right when he does not need that.

Hil'ki, the barren elf, did not work for cheap.

He couldn't afford to. None of the elves could. Praknita's elf district, which for a brief time had almost prospered, was already breaking up. Many elves, particularly those with decent health and comparatively few family ties, were gathering up all their funds and heading south to Gerupta, where it was said an elf might be recruited properly by the great Kouvi and his band of D'Nara. 

Yorrat and Arrat were going. Arrat and Amayi's relli was dead now. He had failed in health and resolve after Amayi failed to return from the palace, going to sleep one night quite drunk and never waking after that. Arrat had only to find someone to care for the children. Hil'ki had offered to be that someone.

It was an offer made in good faith, with an open heart. Though Amayi's taunts had hurt him, Hil'ki cared deeply for his friend's children -- green-tipped Youvi and red-tipped Yaleyi -- and he knew that the journey to Gerupta would be hard for Yorrat, who was lonelier than he let on, to make without a companion.

His brother and Arrat still gazed at him with something like pity when he made the offer. Everyone gazed at him with something like pity. That was the worst thing. The complete lack of surprise in their faces. Elves Hil'ki had brought food and medicine to, elves whose children he'd taught to speak Irvidni and Baruem, elves he had worked hard to place in jobs that would have them --

They did not seem at all surprised that he, a bare branch, a worthless elf with no ability to conceive, should have been abandoned.

"He would have wanted children eventually," Uoleyi told Hil'ki gently.

"You are a hard worker, little brother, but one needs more than that," said Yann, with his fertile, nodding Tai'vi in his arms.

"You still have _us_ ," Hennat pointed out, "Just as you always would have. And of course we don't agree with what Howat has done. None of us will ever speak to him again, you can be sure of that! But you cannot think that a human man, a doctor, should have wanted to settle for a barren life, my love."

It hurt. It hurt almost as much as Omar's repeated rejections, Amayi's suddenly-cruel giggles. Almost as much as Howat -- his brother, his _Howat_ \-- suddenly revealing he could speak, only to spurn Hil'ki. 

Hil'ki still believed steadfastly, for a few weeks after, that this was all a trick. He did everything he could to convince Ladolat to let his loved ones go: threatened, cajoled, begged on his knees. 

Offered his cunt, which only made the prince, Hil'ki's spouse, his brother, and his best friend all laugh and laugh.

But -- but Yann and Tai'vi, Haalki and Hennat, Yorrat and Arrat...

None of them, or indeed anyone else, seemed at all surprised. Amayi had always had a whiff of scandal about him, ever since the children had been born, and in the elf district people simply assumed that he'd simply decided to abandon his young clutch after all. Howat had always been odd, and if he turned out to be cruel as well, well. That was the simplest explanation.

And the human doctor, Omar Barakat. Yes, he and Hil'ki had seemed a good match. Yes, Hil'ki had helped him build a thriving medical practice -- Hil'ki helped everyone. Trying to prove he could be worth something. But at the end of the day, why on earth would a man so distinguished and famed throughout Praknita wish to stay with a spouse that could not give him children?

Soon Hil'ki had heard enough whispers like this, been treated to enough kindly, condescending talks about the importance of at least preserving his pride, that he himself began to doubt. Began to wonder if it wasn't true, that they _had_ all abandoned him.

He didn't want to believe it. But after weeks of begging at the palace, he began to see that he was stupid not to.

Stupid to think himself good enough for Howat, Amayi, or Omar.

The pain was like a fist squeezing the life from his heart. 

After a month, he stopped begging Ladolat for anything. He was deluding himself. He, Hil'ki Guards-the-Branches, was very clearly unworthy. Unworthy of his brother, his best friend, and the man he loved.

And in any case, he had no time to beg. Without a physician, he could not run a medical practice, and without a practice, he had no means to support himself and the toddling elf-children Amayi had left behind. They still had their servants' income, or at least his brothers did, but Hil’ki was now terrified of any of them going to the palace. Twice, Yann and Yorrat had already come to blows with Omar there, and on one unlucky occasion Howat and Hennat had nearly fought, as well.

No, none of them were welcome among their former friends, their former brother. They would need to earn their bread some other way. 

In this, Arthur P. Putnam proved a valuable contact. He listened amiably when Hil’ki appeared, hat in hand, and asked again for a place in his brothel. He made vague noises of interest regarding the money to be made displaying a sweet little clutch of children, one of whom was red-tipped, a rare and unusual variety of elf. When this was done, he passed out, having heard possibly none of what Hil’ki proposed, and then Tsisk and George came forward and helped the elf formulate a plan that would more or less work and keep them all from starving. 

And so it was that Hil’ki, his family, and most of all his tight little cunt, became once more the crowning marvels of A.P. Putnam’s magnificent pleasure emporium. 

This work had always been, if not exactly pleasant, then at least suited to Hil'ki's talents. George built them a sort of box, with a thin pane of glass to separate them from the greedy human eyes that tracked the pretend elf family ("Fresh from D'laniaa! A genuine clutch of jungle-Switches, which are pretty as girls in their youth, but grow into something like men!") And if Hil'ki still privately disliked being shown as a freak, at least he enjoyed the acrobatic shows. He had not been lying when he said that to leap and soar, to tumble and walk the high line with his family -- it was like flying, in a way. It reminded him of being a child in D'laniaa. 

And he had next to no scruples about the more scripted shows, which involved displaying his body, play-acting for Monrovian audiences. He found it amusing, even. All those foreign, superior-seeming men ogling his pert arse as he skipped about, evading George, who always played the part of the randy monster Drukk. Hil'ki would wriggle his little backside enticingly and promise sex, but deliver only comedy. George would always be walloped and chastised by Yann in the second act. Or else Hil'ki and Tai'vi and Haalki and Hennat would succumb to Tsisk for the rarer, more expensive, more exclusive shows in gentlemen's clubs. 

Unlike many Eelies, Tsisk was kind and did not try to punishingly fuck them. He could use his Eelie-abilities to sell the impression of a rape, without actually committing one. His slick Eelie tentacles would plunge into Hil'ki's holes, yes, and there would be an edge of too much cold, but Tsisk never seriously hurt him. Hil'ki had always been good, too, at wriggling and crying and panting just the way Monrovian gentlemen liked. Pretending his partner was destroying him, despite the fact that he clearly had the self-possession to hold open his own cunt lips so everyone could see the tentacles fucking into him. 

This sort of thing, he knew, made him a whore second to none. And while Haalki, Hennat, and Tai'vi would be susceptible to pregnancy, he would not be, and so it was Hil'ki whose cunt was advertised, discreetly but persistently, as the circus toured. Hil'ki who the men queued for. Hil'ki sucked them off in dirty fields and clenched around their sweaty cocks in theater back rooms. 

He didn't precisely like it. But it -- it could make him stop thinking of Omar. Could send him far away. There was no time to pity himself, to rage, when he was choking on a cock. And it helped that to these men he was mostly just a hole, unresisting and impersonal. Hil'ki, he liked getting fucked even a bit roughly, for to a bare branch there was always just the simple relief that someone, anyone, wanted to touch him. 

Omar's touch had been perfect. Sweeter than the big man had realized, a bit hesitant. Committed to Hil'ki. But to have that kindness again might have reduced him to tears. 

Omar was done with him. Omar didn't love him. 

So he told himself to be grateful that these rough, grasping Monrovian men never reminded him of Omar. They liked to pull his hair as he sucked them off, call him names. Leave semen thick in his throat. Then slap his tits or his arse to get him to turn around. Hil'ki, the worthless bare branch, would be leaking a bit, his cunt the sort of barren, dead thing that had learned to take pleasures wherever they came. He'd shudder, tell himself not to cry, and then offer his holes up to be fucked as his throat had been. Smiling all the while. A good, thankful little whore. 

Every load he took was money in their savings. Money to send them all to Gerupta, to the biggest elf and most organized settlement in Irvidni.

He didn't want to return to Praknita when the touring season was over. Not ever. 

One day in the Monrovian capitol, he managed to strike literal gold. A handsome, bored-seeming Monrovian lord was in attendance at one of their private shows in the gentleman's clubs. A Tsisk show. For those, Hil'ki, Haalki, Hennat, and Tai'vi always crawled about like little puppies, pretending to be the animals these Monrovians assumed all elves were. Tsisk played their lord and master, making them fuck his boots and press worshipful kisses to his appendages. The Monrovian lord, at first quite unaffected by the display, soon clearly could not look away.

Hil'ki, knowing a fine mark when he saw one, approached him after and slipped him the address of the park where the circus was putting on its regular shows.

Sure enough, his lordship Robert Westruther, the Earl of Summerstoke, appeared at the tents that very night, quite willing to pay the exorbitant sum of one hundred Monrovian coins for the pleasure of burying his cock in a clutch of four. Hil'ki, a canny negotiator, sold only what his brothers were comfortable with -- Tai'vi's tits, already swelling with milk for the babes Yann had put in his stomach; Hennat's throat; Haalki's arse. 

Hil'ki's everything, for to Hil'ki a cock was a cock, whether it choked him or plumbed his cunt or bruised up his back channel. The Monrovian was like a man possessed, agreeing to every single condition Hil'ki set without so much as blinking, so long as Hil'ki continually reassured him that his Lordship's magnificent cock would, no doubt, be a reward in itself, and that this business of the money was just a small technicality. 

Many humans were like that. Wanting, carnal, and arrogant. Only Omar had not been. Omar had -- Omar had always seemed to be stupefied with wonder when he looked at Hil'ki. Tripping over his tongue. Sneaking big hands out to gently, ever-so-gently, press a small touch to Hil'ki's hair. As if the elf were something special, and he glad to have whatever Hil'ki would give him.

Hil'ki did not cry very often. He was more the sort to break things when he felt emotion, to break and stomp and yell.

But when the particulars were settled, and Tai’vi, Hennat, and Haalki fawning over the Monrovian in the clutch's private tent, he spared a moment to stand by the elephants and wipe away a tear track that had stubbornly appeared on his face.

Yann, sitting nearby on a barrel and bouncing Amayi's giggling babes in his lap, spotted him. His brother carefully hefted up the children in his arms and made a beeline for him.

"You don't have to do this," Yann said at once.

"Don't be stupid," Hil'ki said. "Of course I do. They never want to fuck a _Switch_ \--" that was the vulgar Monrovian slur used against their kind, "--unless they get to spend inside a bright green cunt. Yes? And I won't have him filthying up Hennat or Haalki."

His clutchmates were fertile. Fertile, and, like Hil'ki himself, nearing the age of their pre-dinkala. They should have chosen mates long ago, as Tai'vi had ( _as Howat now has,_ said that shrieking rage and pain in Hil'ki's mind), but Hil'ki knew his two remaining clutchmates had long ago made the choice not to abandon him. So they had never agreed to mate, though they had had plenty of offers.

They had known that his marriage, that foolhardy effort to pretend he could be wanted, would never last.

He was not precisely in a mood to fuck, when he crawled into the tent to serve his lordship. Tai'vi and Hennat were already putting on a show, the pregnant elf simperingly asking his brother-in-law, in halting Monrovian, to please lick his tight little cunny to get him ready for his lordship. This was nearly word-for-word from the script for the Tsisk shows, but his Lordship the Earl of Summerstoke did not seem to notice. He lounged on a bed of cushions, watching, his hand in his fine trousers. Stroking himself off distractedly. Haalki was pressing kisses to his thighs, and, strangely enough, being quite ignored.

They could not have that. One hundred gold would be enough to make this their last summer working in the circus. Enough to get them to Gerupta with money to spare.

Hil'ki crawled to his Lordship and put on his most dazzling smile.

"You want Hil'ki's cunt?" he offered. He knew his Monrovian was pitiful, but he could get the message across well enough, even if he didn't have command of the language. "D'lani cunt good, sir. Best cunt. It perfe--"

"Perfect," Summerstoke gasped out. Something was happening to the lord, something private that made him grimace as if in pain. He stopped stroking himself abruptly and breathed out hard.

"You're--I cannot. I'm sorry. I _cannot_. I-- this is not what I want. Once I did think so, I did, but -- but this is wrong, Hil'ki. I'm sorry. I -- I no longer wish to be the monster I was--"

As he stammered this out, his Lordship did up his trousers, red-faced, and rooted around in his fine coat. As four stunned elves watched, he dropped careless handfuls of gold before them. Then he lurched up, humiliation painted on his attractive features. He apologized repeatedly and then backed out of the tent with the face of a haunted man.

Hil'ki, shocked, got up and followed after him.

He ended up smoking for a bit with this strange, anxious Robert Westruther. The Earl did not seem to mind the communication barrier, and spoke freely of what had made him pause.

“No want D’lani?” Hil'ki asked him, stumbling as he always did when he spoke Monrovian, but still curious to learn what could cause a Monrovian to refuse a bit of elf sex. “Men always want D’lani. What wrong?”

“I had a...I knew a D’lani,” Summerstoke had confessed. “I lost him. Actually I had two and I lost them both. But after the first I could keep going. I thought I couldn’t, but it was only my pride smarting. But to lose my dryad — the second was _my_ dryad — oh, I’m not explaining this right—“

But no. No, he didn't need to say more. Hil'ki understood.

“First is just sweetheart--" like the mature elves his brothers enjoyed during their heats. Fleeting, passing affections. Any evidence to be disposed of before Haalki and Hennat began to show, with little-to-no emotion over it. But the second-- 

"Second is avva, love. Second is tuo.”

Family. Like what Hil'ki had had in Praknita, with Omar and Amayi and Howat. Hil'ki still had it, still had loved ones, and yet it wasn't the same. Some people, when they left, left behind wounds so great they might never heal.

The Earl of Summerstoke had nodded, and looked at Hil'ki with a misery in his green gaze that Hil'ki understood intimately. An ever-present misery that simply wove itself into the tapestry of one's life, and that one could not force away.

It had been months since all his dearest had rejected him. But the pain had not gone away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read "The Earl and the Dryad," that fic gives you some of this exchange as Summerstoke understood it. 
> 
> (Mostly Summerstoke understood it as All About Him, because that is how my romantic ((non))heroes tend to process things, lol.)


	10. A Good Elf

When the summer was over, they went to Gerupta. 

That city was even hotter and more dense than Praknita. Not so beautiful, without so many parks. More animals in the streets: cats and dogs and birds of all colors. Elves did not live in brick hovels in Gerupta, but in cloth tents much smaller than those of the circus, or in brown-walled tenements. The crowded poverty here was not offensive to any of them, though. It was just the same for elves nearly everywhere, ever since D'laniaa had fallen to the Monrovians.

In Gerupta's outdoor elf markets and around its elven cooking fires, all anyone talked of was restoring D'laniaa. For all the ugliness of the city, there was an excitement in the air here, a purpose. Elves who could barely scrape together enough to put two lentils on the table still gave proudly to the tall, united D'Nara-D'Lani crews that manned Kouvi-Who-Kills-Monrovians' ships. Here the family reconnected with Yorrat, who gave a cry of uncharacteristic happiness to come upon them one day, when they had set up a tent on the side of the street. There were joyous embraces then, as the surliest of Hil'ki's brothers grabbed each of them in turn and exclaimed his delight over seeing them again, over Tai'vi's big belly, over Yann's new circus tattoos.

"Arrat is expecting too," Yorrat said with a grin. "And he's been wanting to ask you to send him the babies, Youvi and Yaleyi."

And then, before they knew it, they were all of them staying in the small two-room house Yorrat and his new _relli_ maintained. Yorrat had been selected to man the ships, and Arrat, he had wedded the other elf proudly, happy to mate a revolutionary pirate, and now his belly swelled as big as Tai'vi's. 

Yorrat and Arrat lived in the back room. The front room -- well. Now that he was not likely to be bred by a man, Arrat would sometimes host men there. He explained this a bit shamefacedly. All the young elves in Gerupta engaged in this sort of thing, for money was even tighter here than it had been in Praknita. That was why, in Gerupta, it wasn't uncommon to see little human babies in the elf homes, children sired not by their seafaring pirate elven fathers, but by the wealthier humans who unwittingly funded the elves' naval attacks on Monrovia by paying handsomely for elf-cunt.

But Gerupta elves were patriotic, and so while whoring was necessary, it was not precisely accepted. Not spoken of. An elf might be forgiven for doing it once or twice, might even be forgiven for bearing a mixed clutch. But elves were not supposed to be proud of it. Not supposed to seek it out. 

"Not even you, Hil'ki," Arrat cautioned. 

"Me?" Hil'ki almost laughed. "Why not? It's not as if an elf would have me."

In Praknita, everyone had known of his flaw. In Gerupta, now and then an unfamiliar mature elf would attempt to catch his eye, but he always looked away. He did not want to deceive them. And -- and there was Omar.

(No. There was not Omar. That was foolishness and pain speaking, he would think shamefacedly.)

There were more elves to compete with for jobs here, and few jobs open to elves, period. Elves were low-caste foreigners here too, largely unemployable no matter they went in Irvidni. So Hil'ki resolved to continue working his chosen profession unabated. 

He was good at whoring. He even liked it, sometimes. He had no husband now. No one to fill him when he felt empty and wanting, when he woke, alone in his meager bedding in the corner of his brother's house, and wanted only a touch.

He took to patrolling the markets, looking for men who had -- who had that certain feeling to them. Hil'ki was no fool, and knew to trust his instincts around human men. Any sign of banked violence meant the man was to be avoided. No, he needed an eager, young sort of human, one who was a bit uncertain but not truly possessive. One who would only want to play-act a bit, and would pay for a partner in that. It helped that he was fluent in Irvidni now, too, as he once had not been, and could converse with them, out in the open.

Once he'd decided they were safe enough, then he would take them to a back alley or a shadowy corner.

"What hole do you want?" he would say, without preamble, dropping into character. "Or do you want them all, good master? Forty rudins and you can ruin them all--"

Some of them, delighted, would then grab him at once. Call him a slut as he undid their trousers. Grasp his arsecheeks roughly, or clasp his little tits with greedy fists. He would bear it. This was part of it, this manhandling. Being thrown onto all fours, often having his arse penetrated before it was really ready or pliable. He would bite down on his cries, and simply let himself be lost in it.

"Gonna wreck you," they'd promise. "Gonna fuck you--"

" _Please_ ," he'd agree.

They never touched his cock, or pressed kisses to him, like Omar had. They just drove into him. Cocks parting the tunnel of his arse. Or splitting open his cunt, the pain a bright, welcome distraction after a day spent trying carefully to avoid what he really wanted.

Kindness. Clumsy, sweet affection. _Omar_.

Sometimes he cried, as he was fucked. But he always pretended he didn't. And his purchasers, they never noticed it. 

-

One day, he came upon an unusual stranger. 

Omar would have called it a demon. A dog demon of the North, only to Hil'ki, the rare Wrollves in Irvidni looked nothing like dogs. They were huge, beast-like men, their thick, hairy arms and chests often matted with sweat from the heat of Irvidni. Their hands and feet were clawed, and tusks peeked from their mouths. Even the handsome ones had slit-pupiled eyes that squinted painfully under the Irvidni sun, as if Wrollves were better suited to darkness.

They were great travelers, Hil'ki knew. They came from far in the North, but inevitably left their snowy homeland to roam the world and find their mates. 

And, like any man, sometimes just to find a good fuck. 

The platinum-haired Wrollf took a deep sniff of Hil'ki as soon as the elf approached him.

"I scent that you are not my mate," he said glumly, his odd accent so thick that Hil'ki had to strain to understand him. "But I did not expect you to be. I do not expect I will ever find my mate. I am Orrak of the Snows, you see, and I was born unlucky."

Hil'ki blinked. Though Orrak of the Snows was the largest being he had ever met, a head taller than even Omar, with a cock so large his grubby linen trousers bulged obscenely, nothing else about the Wrollf seemed dangerous. There was something downcast about the creature, that suggested he was in need of a friend quite as much as he perhaps needed a fuck.

"I'm no one's mate," Hil'ki clarified for him. "But I can offer you pleasure, Mister Orrak."

Orrak of the Snows sighed.

"I thank you for the offer," he said. "I will take you up on it. I have to find my pleasure where I can, you see. I scent you are like me, and do the same. That comforts me. Nothing much comforts me, but I am weak enough that those who are in their own way quite as outcast as I am rouse my sympathy and fellow feeling. I scent that you are outcast when you should not be. I am outcast and _should_ be -- being terribly unlucky -- and so I am quite a bit worse than you. I hope that is a comfort to you. I scent that you need it. Come, little elf."

And he held out a hairy, clawed hand. Hil'ki, blinking up at him with no small amount of surprise, dared to put his smaller and much more brown palm in it. For all his heft, Orrak was gentle in pulling him to the doorway of one of the elven-owned lodging-houses that bordered the marketplace.

"Your Irvidni is good," Hil'ki said, feeling suddenly almost shy. The combination of the Wrollf's size and downcast, nearly-placid gaze reminded him acutely of Omar. Though this was painful, it also loosed something out of him, a sort of emotional splinter.

How stupid. He _had_ missed this. Missed kindness. Howat's casual, near-indifferent kindness. Amayi's biting, wickedly funny kindness. And especially this sort of kindness. Omar's sort of despondent-yet-determined kindness. So much. 

"As is yours," said the Wrollf now. "I scent that you are a traveler, as I am, because you have needed to be. I scent too that you do this because you must, because you have no choice. You will decide how I am to take you, if you like. I scent that you are the sort to know your own mind."

Hil'ki swallowed. Orrak, hunching low to fit into the narrow hallways of the lodging house, led him up a set of rickety steps to what was evidently his room. It was in the back of the house, and quite cool to Hil'ki, but the Wrollf was still sweating a bit. When the door shut behind them, Orrak dropped his hand and began to disrobe himself, revealing a chest as wide as a banyan tree.

And a cock so huge it even gave Hil'ki pause.

"I--I don't know if I can take that--"

Orrak sighed again.

"I scented as much. It is my fault. In my mother's womb, I was greedy, taking too much. My brother Yilk took less, and was born sleek and handsome. He was better at nursing, too. I am told I was a chore to nurse. I leave it up to you, little elf, if you wish to continue. I am lonely, but for me that is the usual state of things."

"I do not think a child in the womb can control its hunger," Hil'ki ventured, smiling a bit despite his nervousness at the size of that prick. He began to disrobe. He would find a way to take Orrak, somehow, for he liked the odd, depressed creature despite himself.

"Yilk could," Orrak said glumly. "There is nothing Yilk cannot do. He asked me to come to Gerupta, because his scent is better than mine, and when he was here he scented beautiful water elves. He believes his mate may be among them, and he is sure to be right because he is never wrong. He told me that I may find them where he has not, a kind thought on his part. I am afraid I shall not find them. He is the best of Wrollves, and I a disappointment. I tried to write him back and tell him as much, but I was in Praknita when I got his letter, and the post there is very expensive. So I thought I would come to Gerupta and tell him in person, but--"

Another sigh. Orrak's sighs were powerful, feeling things, gusting out of the cavernous chest with crestfallen purpose.

"--but of course he was gone. Such is my luck. Bad luck."

Hil'ki, for his part, was still laughing a bit. But he hid the laugh in a cough, for he didn't want to make fun of Orrak. The big Wrollf was sitting on a cot, making it strain beneath his weight. Hil'ki, now naked, crawled between his massive thighs.

"I'll lick you a bit to start. My mouth is ten rudins. My cunt is normally fifteen, and my arse another fifteen. If we go over a half hour, I charge another five by the half hour, Mister Orrak--"

Orrak sighed, and reached for his clothes again to pull out his coin purse.

"I scent you do not know your own worth. Here, take sixty to start, little elf, for I know I am ungainly, and you bold indeed for your little size. Do what you like. I only want touch, I think."

Hil'ki did as well. Oh, he did as well. He -- he woke every day and faced the reality of being alone, and it was often too much to bear.

He took the coins and folded them into the pockets of his discarded shirt. Then he pressed a kiss to Orrak's prick, his small lips obscene on the great fat head. 

He had run out of crocus-salve months ago, and there were no crocuses in Gerupta to make more, and oil was expensive and what he did have of that would perhaps cover an eighth of this pole. 

So he would have to get it sloppy with his spit. Slick it up. This cock would be a challenge, but he had been back in the whore's game long enough that he did not think it would be insurmountable. 

His licks made Orrak groan, low and rough. The big Wrollf's hands were determined fists on his huge thighs. Hil'ki paused and said, "You can touch my hair, or my tits, Mister Orrak--"

"Thank you. It is only Orrak--" the big Wrollf said at once.

And then Hil'ki was back to tasting him, getting him wet. Orrak smelled hot and powerful, and Hil'ki's own empty little cunt twitched at it. The taste was neither good nor bad. It was simply overpowering, salty and heavy with a spice neither elven nor human. Hil'ki shifted so he could spread his own thighs a bit. Sneak a finger into his cunt and begin to rub himself ready. 

Orrak traced the elf's little green nipples with a claw, careful not to hurt Hil'ki. He grunted.

"I scent these will never give milk. I scent this bothers you. It should not. They are very pretty, little elf. You are good as you are, even if you do not think it."

Hil'ki blinked a tear away. Not simply because now he was trying to suckle the huge, thick head, which was growing firmer and hotter in his mouth.

"I scent someone loves you, little elf. Someone has looked upon you and seen in you all the best you have to offer, and loved you for that, and seen your worst, and for that loved you more. I scent you think he does not care. You are wrong. It is that he cares, but he cannot tell you. He cannot tell anything. I scent a great tragedy afoot here."

Hil'ki pulled off the huge prick, steadying himself a bit. He blinked up at Orrak.

"W--what?"

The big Wrollf exhaled, hard. He was half-hard now, and panting a bit, and seemed to come back to himself from somewhere. He looked ashamed.

"My scent is not always to be trusted," he said, after a moment. "Particularly in cities. Forgive me. I will stop speaking of it. These are only impressions. I am poor company when I get like this. I am poor company generally, for I am Orrak of the Snows."

"Oh," said Hil'ki, unsettled.

He had been paid sixty rudins, so he got back to work. And, truly, the work was not so unpleasant as it could have been. Orrak tugged almost pleasantly on his nipples, the pressure feeding his cunt. Helping to get it drippy. And the big cock was warm beneath Hil'ki's tongue, which Hil'ki liked. 

He licked all along the shaft, drooling on it. He grasped for his little oil-flask and rubbed in what he had left, getting the rest of the firm pole as slippery as he could. Orrak stayed still and let him work, his big hands a gentle press on Hil'ki's hair, Hil'ki's tits, that grounded Hil'ki and made him almost happy to please the big Wrollf.

He wasn't sure he'd ever really be ready to take this cock. But after about fifteen minutes, he knew neither he nor Orrak would be getting any slicker. And he was feeling empty. He wanted a fuck, even if it hurt. 

He pulled himself off the Wrollf's cock, breathing heavily. He stood and turned. Leaned forward a bit, to reach back and part his folds. 

"You can put it in," he told Orrak, for the big, gentle brute seemed to need permission to take what he'd already paid for.

Clawed hands closed on Hil'ki's slender hips, pulling him almost tenderly back. Then one of the big hands dropped down and was guiding the huge head to Hil'ki's cunt.

It felt big even pressing at his entrance. When it popped into him, the stretch was so great Hil'ki made an unbidden, guttural sound. Everything narrowed to the huge thing in his cunt, the slow, steady slide of it into him. The unmissable size, and the fact that his partner was still so kind, so attentive. Not assuming he could take it. Thus fucking the large cock into him gently, with painful slowness. Giving him time to adjust until he bottomed out.

For a moment, he forgot who he was with. For a moment, he was happy, and this was his Omar again. His Omar, who would always--

The big hand closed on Hil'ki's cock. Just like Omar would do. Stroking him, caring for _his_ pleasure. But the curve of the claw wasn't Omar. Hil'ki blinked, came back to himself.

"N-not there," he said.

He wanted it. He did. He loved having his cocklet played with. But -- but that was Omar's right. Omar's to touch, no one else's. 

He brushed away his tears before Orrak could detect them.

But the Wrollf's mournful voice suggested that he had noticed them all the same.

"I have overstepped. I am sorry, little elf. You are so kind as to let me touch your chest. I will be pleased with that."

Then he did migrate that hand up to Hil'ki's chest. He massaged and played with Hil'ki's tits, as their hips moved in tandem. The edge of claw rolling Hil'ki's nipples to little points made the elf pant. And inside him was that enormous cock, commanding almost all his attention. He was parted around it, fucked so wide he could scarcely clench. He could only move his hips in time with Orrak's.

Fucked so well. Like his husband had once fucked him. With this blend of inevitable pain and determined care, like Hil'ki was a precious thing. The elf cried freely now, giving himself over to both his loneliness and his relief at the fuck. He had to bite his lip, or he was going to end up calling out the wrong name.

They somehow moved from fucking half-standing to Hil'ki sitting impaled. Mewling. The large cock was outlined in his belly. He'd always liked this, when it had been Omar. It took him out of his head, to see a man fucking right up into the useless womb as if Hil'ki deserved that. 

Orrak maneuvered them onto the cot lengthwise.

"Shall I turn you over, little elf? Or hands and knees? We are past thirty minutes. I will remember to pay you--"

Hil'ki could only moan his thanks. He managed to lurch forward, onto his hands and knees, making the cock slide out of him a bit. The drag was rough, but incredibly pleasurable. He was so close to coming. 

Then the big creature was fucking him from behind. Filling him up. Just as slow and good as Omar had, and so he still sobbed freely. He let himself be pried open so sweetly, knowing he would walk away with a sore gape and a sense of such satisfaction. He was grateful, thinking of it. So grateful. 

He came on that steady, attentive monster cock. He thought by then they had broken the cot, but this was a distant thought. His world had shrunken down to this familiar, kind-painful fucking, and his mind was blank but for the hum of remembering his Omar, pretending this was his Omar. He just gave a little grunt when he was ready, and then he gushed like the whore he was, as Orrak pounded into him.

"I scent you needed that," said the Wrollf. He fucked Hil'ki through his orgasm, patting Hil'ki's little back almost kindly.

-

Afterwards, Hil'ki was paid an additional twenty rudins so Orrak could hold him.

The elf, rubbing at his wet eyes, insisted that he did not want the money. This -- this strange encounter was no longer just a transaction, somehow. He _wanted_ to be held. It would not have been like his husband, would not have been right, to be fucked like this and not held after. And that in and of itself was a bit unfair to Orrak.

But the Wrollf just calmly reached down and picked up Hil'ki's shirt. Dropped the coins in the pockets. Hil'ki was still splayed out on the broken cot, the huge cock still half-in him. Plugging up the burning-hot Wrollf cum inside him, which had been an unusual but not unwelcome thing to find pumped into his belly.

He moaned a bit when Orrak settled back on top of him. 

Heavy, just like his Omar had been.

"You are so small," Orrak said worriedly. "I will turn us over, little elf."

Hil'ki could only let out another moan as he was moved. The huge prick slid out and cum bubbled out of him. His hole spasmed on the empty air, making dirty squelch-noises. But then he was on Omar's chest, being held--

No. No. _Orrak's_ chest.

He closed his eyes tight as big hands rubbed his back.

"We can go again, if you like," he managed, when he'd found his voice. "If you are able, Mister Orrak."

It was traitorous of him, but he missed the dirty thrill of getting a kind man to fuck him in the arse. If he could have a hard, sweet arse-fucking, and a chance to pretend that, too, was Omar, then he would take it. It was the best he would get.

"I am always able," noted the Wrollf. "My kind are all good at fucking, little elf. We can fuck for sixteen hours, pause for a piss, and then go again for sixteen more. If we wish, we can fuck so that we knot our partner, and tie them to us by the bulge in our pricks alone. Even a sorry Wrollf like me can fuck this way. But -- and please pardon the presumption, little elf -- I think what you need is holding. When you are ready, you may slide yourself along my stand. For that pleasure, I will pay what you like. I scent that, really, one so ugly and unlucky as myself must behave appropriately, when he comes upon a kind little elf willing to have him."

"You aren't fair to yourself," Hil'ki mumbled out.

Omar had been the same way. And, just like with Omar, Hil'ki's attempts to reassure were only batted away, the big Wrollf quite determined to think poorly of himself and not be gainsaid on that point. 

So Hil'ki settled for pushing down the length of the big, hairy torso, until he could indeed rub his cunt on Orrak's hardening length. It felt good. He steadied himself on the big form and humped the Wrollf, letting his mind go blank as he built to another orgasm.

He was nearly there when the door flew open. He was so caught up, he reacted only belatedly, when Orrak had already given a snarl and pulled him up close, wrapping his big body around him.

"Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches, selling his loose Yellikat cunt again," spat one of the intruders, in D'lani. 

It _was_ a D'lani. It was three of them. Big stripling elves, no longer young enough to bear, but only just into their majority, by the looks of them. They were not so half-starved nor so raggedly-dressed as most elves, and thus likely belonged to one of the better-off families, the few that there were here in Gerupta. Possibly they belonged to one of the lines that even owned this lodging house. Hil'ki also thought he recognized at least two of them from the marketplace. There, in one corner, often grouped a glum cadre of nine or ten deemed by Kouvi to not be ready to join up yet. The fierce, noble elf pirate was selective about those who joined his crews, dismissing any elves who showed any signs of immaturity.

But the fervor of free D'laniaa still shone through in these faces. The three elves advanced into the room, uncaring of the nakedness of the occupants.

"You sell your cunt too much, Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches," snapped one, the one who'd spoken.

Hil'ki, fully aware and offended now, roused himself in Orrak's arms. 

"That is none of _your_ concern--"

"It is!" snapped the strange elf. "Some would think you like being a slave to beasts. They say you even married a human once. You do us all a dishonor, Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches. You are the bitch the humans say we all are. Panting on a cock, shameless about it. When D'laniaa is freed, it will have no room for _your_ sort--"

And now the three elves lunged, but the massive Wrollf was ready for them. He tossed Hil'ki aside onto the cot, Hil'ki gasping as the breath was knocked from him. When he looked up, Orrak had slammed one elf into a wall and kicked another. The third, the speaker, he simply backhanded, leaving that elf passed out cold.

"I scent they meant you no good, little elf," the Wrollf said, reaching for his own shirt and trousers again. "Come. I will walk you to your home. It seems you have enemies. I regret my role in bringing this about. If there is something I can do to protect you, you must tell me."

Hil'ki, hiccuping with a bit of leftover shock and fright, pulled on his own clothes, never mind the fluids on his thighs and his cunt. He could not think why this was happening. Why any elves should begrudge him his whoring. When Omar had, he had understood that as just a cultural whim. Part of Omar's odd Hakash makeup. But -- but elves were not supposed to care about that sort of thing. Particularly not when it came to a creature like Hil'ki, a bare branch.

He stammered this out to Orrak as the hulking Wrollf escorted him back to Yorrat and Arrat's hut. 

"Hmm," said Orrak. "You know, little elf, all Wrollves once came from the Norderlands, and we all are sons of our great ancient Norderlands ancestor, Lumo. But over time we have spread out, and now there are Wrollves from everywhere. Wrollves like me, of the Norderlands, do not care so much about being from the Norderlands. I have scented I will never see my homeland again, and it does not hurt me so much as most of the things I scent. But to a Wrollf not born in the Norderlands, the place takes on a special air. Those Wrollves have all sorts of rules about how to be a Wrollf, and some of them even claim that some Wrollves are not fit to be sons of Lumo at all."

"Yes," Hil'ki said, not knowing enough about Wrollves to assess that for himself. "But elves, Mister Orrak, are not supposed to be like that!"

Orrak sighed.

Hil'ki turned the odd attack over in his mind and could find no reason for it. He was green-faced with furious humiliation by the time he reached his home. 

There, another three he thought he recognized from the marketplace, along with four or five he knew from the recruiting crews, were speaking to a sobbing Arrat and a stubborn-looking Tai'vi. And there were gathered around them a number of other elves who had come from Praknita. Uoleyi the elder, and Torrat, who was now a doctor on the boats.

And in the crowd, with a sort of ring of space around him, as if the others were afraid to come too close and offend him, was a tall, handsome dryad Hil'ki had only ever seen once. A dryad with dark brown skin, high cheekbones, and perfect, arched golden brows.

"There, Captain Kouvi!" crowed one of the Gerupta elves, whose well-pressed linens suggested he was among the spoiled, immature young men of the marketplace. "He comes with the monster he has sold himself to, to his own brother's house! Where there are two elves heavy with clutch, who might be brutalized--"

"I scent this is bad," Orrak sighed.

"I don't think you need to scent that to know it," Hil'ki forced out worriedly. 

Though the big Wrollf was trying to step between him and the mob, he refused to permit Orrak to be drawn into this. This was between elves. He pushed off of Orrak and hurried forwards.

"Hil'ki is a good elf!" Uoleyi was saying furiously, to the jeering Gerupta elves. Many from Praknita were agreeing, including a worried-looking Arrat and a thin-lipped Tai'vi. But the only one Hil'ki had eyes for in the clamor was Kouvi. 

"Captain--" he began himself. As he came close, one of the marketplace elves jabbed a finger into his chest with a jeer.

Kouvi Ul'la-Yenat-Morovia, with one fluid motion, grabbed the marketplace elf and drove his knee into that elf's chest. The marketplace elf went down, with a shocked shriek.

"Badly done, Yennit, to touch a young one like that," noted Kouvi. 

A hush fell over the crowd. Kouvi nodded at his crew.

"Grab the beast. I know something of Wrollves, and I do not trust them."

"No!" Hil'ki cried. 

He turned around to try and help Orrak, and was treated to the startling vision of the huge Wrollf dropping to his knees of his own volition. Orrak's blue, slit-pupiled eyes were fixed on the gorgeous Kouvi, as if unable to look away. He did not even seem to notice that some of the elves binding him with ropes were the very naiads he had been seeking.

And he looked almost happy. For the first time.

"Before we deal with that thing, we shall deal with little Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches," Kouvi said now, gently turning Hil'ki to face him. Hil'ki stared up at the handsome elf, who was much younger than he might have thought, possibly only a few years past his pre-dinkala himself. 

"Young one," Kouvi said gravely. "Certain accusations have been leveled against you. I will grant you -- they're pretty much ridiculous ones. You are not the first elf to sell yourself in these times--"

"And it doesn't matter if I do it," Hil'ki forced out. "I'm a Yellikat, sir. I cannot bear--"

"I am almost envious," Kouvi said, without skipping a beat. There was not a hint of disgust in his eyes. Perhaps a bit of pity, but then Hil'ki was used to that. "I would have liked to be the same, when Monrovians were pawing at me and using me for their pleasure. I have been where you are, young one. Are you being coerced?"

"No," Hil'ki insisted. There was a murmur among the crowd. The Praknita elves clearly saw no issue with his answer, but some of the Gerupta elves looked mutinous at it.

"That is the problem!" said the marketplace elf now, being helped up by his fellows. "He likes it! The little slut even married a human, they say--"

"Hm," said Kouvi. Just that managed to shut the crowd up, though there was still a certain electric tension in the air.

"You should let Orrak go," Hil'ki said, into the tight quiet. "He has been nothing but kind to me. This I pledge to you, who are an elf twice-over, of D'Nara and D'lani both. I would not lie to you--"

But Kouvi's reply was almost a snarl.

"Most Wrollves cannot be trusted, child! Nor can human men. They may make you think you love them, but it is a game. They deal in manipulation and cruelty, all to see a pretty elf on his knees, begging for their dirty cocks--"

Orrak made a mournful sound low in his throat.

"Sir, I was the elf that kept all of Praknita's elf district running," Hil'ki said firmly. He knew this to be mostly a boast, and was thus surprised when Uoleyi and some of his fellow Praknita elves cried, "Hear, hear!" 

Hil'ki blinked, but continued.

"I have not matured yet. And I am a bare branch. But I am neither an idiot nor a child. I have only ever given my heart to one, and yes, that was a human. But he did not manipulate me, Captain Kouvi. I manipulated him, so that he would treat my people when they were ill--"

"There was nothing Hil'ki wouldn't do for us!" Uoleyi put in here, stoutly. Hil'ki blushed quite unbidden, but kept going.

"You may trust that, when I tell you Orrak has been kind, I mean it. I approached him seeking to earn money for my clutch and for your cause. He gave it to me without demanding anything but what I was willing to give--"

"Still," Kouvi said coldly. "I do not want a Wrollf entrapping any of our people--"

"I am not _entrapped_!" Hil'ki said, stamping his foot. "Ask any elf in Praknita if I have ever been entrapped. But I know the quickest way to put food on the table, Captain Kouvi--"

"And it is a shame you do not let young ones on the boats," said Tai'vi now, determinedly stepping forward. His hands were clasped over his big belly protectively. "Hil'ki has nerves of steel, and would be a better addition to the crews than this Yennit, who wishes to buy his way onto your forces by humiliating the weakest of us!"

"Hear, hear!" cried Uoleyi again, amid angry murmurs of agreement from the other Praknita elves. "Hil'ki has given everything to us, Captain! It is he who cradled the smallest clutches when their dying rellis could not! He who brought medicine to those of us who were sick! He who made sure we could get letters to our cousins here in Gerupta, and he who traded our weaving and cooking for the coin we needed to survive. Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches is the finest elf I know!"

And now there were not murmurs, but cheers. Cheers of agreement. Hil'ki, attempting to wrap his mind around this, only stared about at his friends and loved ones with a strange, confused feeling taking hold of his heart.

How could they say this? Did they believe this? They had all seemed to think he wasn't fit, wasn't even fit to keep his dearest from leaving him--

Well. He supposed that didn't mean he couldn't be fit for other things. Fighting for them. Working for them. Perhaps it didn't soothe the pain of being inferior in other ways, but it was no surprise. And in its own way it was even flattering.

"Hil'ki has cared for my kelli's clutch, Captain Kouvi," Arrat said now, wiping at the tear-tracks on his face. "Our Amayi, it shames me to say he is guilty of abandonment and cruelty. And I could not face raising the little ones he left behind, one who is D'Sula--"

There were shocked, unsettled mumurs from the crowd now.

"--an elf on two fronts, like you! That child, twice blessed but twice abandoned, would have gone without a _tuo_ , Captain Kouvi, had Hil'ki not offered to take him and his brother into the Guards-the-Branches."

"Three cheers," Uoleyi cried now, "For Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches!"

And around Hil'ki, around a stunned Captain Kouvi, the bulk of the crowd -- some forty elves by now -- erupted into passionate cheers.

-

After this he was invited to the low dockside house where Kouvi and his crew were staying. 

Orrak was not invited. Orrak was dragged along. Hil'ki was unable to convince Kouvi to let him go. He therefore had to comfort himself with the obvious thought that the massive Wrollf was certainly big enough to break free of the tiny ropes holding back his straining biceps if he liked. Only Orrak did not seem to like that. Orrak seemed to like being tied, so long as he could gaze upon the handsome profile of Captain Kouvi, renowned killer of Monrovians.

They were shown to a dark, cool room where half of the elves -- the dryad half -- shivered as they argued over maps. The other half -- the naiads -- appeared perfectly comfortable.

Including one elf, an elder with whiter hair than even Uoleyi, who Kouvi himself approached with a respectful bow.

"Greatest of my grandfathers," he said politely, pulling Hil'ki forward by the arm. 

He had had Torrat look Hil'ki over for injuries, and had permitted the little elf to clean himself a bit. And now -- now he presented Hil'ki to an ancient, powerful being that Hil'ki had never thought he would meet.

Ril'karrat, the leader of the naiads. The one who was said to have been so beautiful and fertile in his youth that he had captivated the great dryad leader, Eleyi, and so wedded the fortunes of the dryads to those of their cousin-elves, the naiads.

That had been a few hundred of years ago. There was still great beauty in Ril'karrat's face, in his high cheekbones and his smooth black skin. But his large black eyes were old indeed, taking in Hil'ki and the trussed-up Wrollf behind them as though nothing, not even whatever this was, was likely to surprise him much.

"My Kouvi. Who is this, then?"

"Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches, grandfather. I would have you consider him--"

Hil'ki had not been able to believe this, when Kouvi had agreed with Tai'vi, and proposed this to him. He could scarcely believe it now. It was an honor indeed for an elf to be chosen, and so for this to happen to him seemed the wildest sort of dream.

But Ril'karrat was firm in his opposition.

"I will not permit one of his minor age to take the risk of joining our crews," said the prince of the seas, firmly. "At his age, he should be enjoying his nest, the _relli_ of a clutch--"

Hil'ki shrank back, but found he could not lie, not to such being as this.

"I cannot. I'm barren, Great Ril'karrat. A bare branch--"

"And even were he not, I would still suggest this," Kouvi said irritably. "This little one has been relli to all our kinsmen in Praknita for years, it seems. There are many elves who speak of his fearlessness and commitment to helping his fellows. He lives for others, not himself. You ask me why I do not take all the mature ones that put themselves forwards, grandfather? It is because some of them are pampered, and live as selfishly as humans--"

"Not every elf needs to have suffered as you have, to have something to offer, Kouvi," said Ril'karrat gently.

"And yet I do not want the ones who cannot exert themselves to abate the suffering of others," replied his descendant, blue eyes bright with fierce emotion. "My clutchmates, my dead, grandfather. My Kalki, and my Kerrat. They offered themselves over and over, submitted to the cruel rapes of the Monrovians. Many times, because _I_ needed it. Becase I was sick, and begging for medicine. Because I was tired and sore myself, and begging for rest. You have asked me many times what I would do with D'laniaa, were it to be restored to us? I would elevate those like this Hil'ki Guards-The-Branches, grandfather. I would have all those who have rendered themselves desperate and low for the sake of others rewarded, given a place. Even if they are young, or barren. Or simply odd, as I am, or sick, as I was."

Hil'ki stared at the prince-elf in amazement. The speech was so firm and passionate, and oddly reassuring. Kouvi was not really a prince, of course. Old D'laniaa had not precisely had princes, only clutchlines that came from famous ancestors, lines that had accomplished something significant. But it was easy to see why the human term _prince_ had been affixed to Kouvi. It was more than his clutchline. It was his air of fierce commitment and self-assurance. 

Hil'ki wondered why the prince should call himself _odd_ , though.

"And this fellow?" Ril'karrat said, extending a hand to the left of his handsome grandson.

Kouvi looked over and started. At some point during their short exchange, Orrak had simply broken the ropes binding him and come forward to stand before the naiad leader, as if he were kidnapped by elves every day. 

He bowed low, to both Ril'karrat and Kouvi.

"What are you doing?" Kouvi demanded. "I was going to have you punished, for dominating this young elf!"

"He didn't dominate me," Hil'ki found himself protesting, rolling his eyes. Had the prince never taken pleasure with a non-elf before? It did not always _have_ to be cruel. 

Orrak nodded.

"I scent that one like me has hurt you, great Captain, and so you do not trust me. This is not your fault. It is my own bad luck. I am Orrak of the Snows, and very unlucky. I would like to join your band, and be by your side if you will have me, but I suppose I should advise you not to have me. I scent calamity in my future. I scent calamity generally. I never scent good things, you see. Only bad things--"

"You Wrollves and your scent!" Kouvi snarled. "What makes you think I care about that? I want you trussed up and punished--"

"Kouvi," Ril'karrat protested faintly. "He does not seem a bad Wrollf--

"I will tie myself up at once," Orrak said quickly. "I cannot scent if this will please you, but I will do it--"

"Oh? You cannot scent how little regard I have for those who take their pleasure in elf-cunt, as if my people are nothing more than sleeves for their cocks--"

"I--I cannot scent _anything_ about how you feel," Orrak confessed. 

And then the big, pale Wrollf went pink beneath his braided platinum beard.

"In the Norderlands, Captain Kouvi, there is a saying. About certain kinds of Wrollves. Unlucky ones. They say we are the ones who will never mate as normal Wrollves, lusty and powerful. They say that, for us, we can only mate when we find our _saimu_. The one whose feelings we cannot scent. The ones who are like blank walls to us."

The big Wrollf reached down and gathered up his ropes again, began binding himself up. Now he was speaking almost shyly.

"I believe you are that for me, Captain Kouvi."

-

In the end, Ril'karrat pressed Kouvi to accept Orrak as a crew-member, and Kouvi pressed Ril'karrat to accept Hil'ki.

It seemed the naiad leader liked Wrollves. Wrollves had apparently tangled with the naiads before, to great mutual pleasure. And the handsome prince, in his great-great-grandfather's estimation, _was_ odd. 

Kouvi-Who-Kills-Monrovians did not want anyone to touch him. This Hil'ki learned, for the first ship he served on, as ships' lookout, was Kouvi's, and he watched the prince shy away from anyone who so much as dared approach him. He had an almost instinctive loathing of being handled in any way, and though he was not a cruel captain, any elf who so much as tried to propose a sexual dalliance would find himself hit so hard he saw stars. And the naiads onboard -- for the crews still were mostly naiads -- spoke worriedly, too, of how unlikely it was that Kouvi would ever put himself forward and sire a clutch.

The line of the Weds-Leaves-to-Sea, the line which had first united their peoples, which had blended elf with elf, was likely to end with the prince.

Hil'ki's new friend, Orrak of the Snows, was not so arrogant as to think he could overcome the prince's inhibitions. But Hil'ki wanted him to. After a month with the gentle Wrollf, everyone on that ship wanted him to. Though Orrak called himself ugly, stupid, and generally unlucky, and though some or all of those things seemed to be true, depending on the elf you spoke to, no one disagreed that he had a fine character despite that. He was kind. His tender, unassuming personality made space for the prince. He was attentive to Kouvi, patient with his moods, and above all good to him.

By the time Hil'ki had completed his training as lookout and cabin boy, and was transferred to his brother Yorrat's ship, it was clear that Orrak of the Snows, for all his faults, had succeeded in making fierce Kouvi love him. 

It had been five months aboard the ships. A full year since Hil'ki had lost Omar. Hil’ki was proud to attend the wedding, and prouder still when Orrak, who could not seem to get his brother Yilk to visit the Ordanian island where their ships were docked, asked Hil'ki to stand in for him as his family for the ceremony. 

But it hurt, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry it’s taken so long to update! Life is quite hellish atm. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. It is one of my favorites, because I do love Orrak. He’s a dear. I think his brother gaslit him into thinking he would never find his soulmate by feeding him that nonsense about _saimu_ (Probably less a bit of genuine Wrollf lore than a thing dirtbag Wrollfteens use to torment their nerdy brothers), but the joke’s on him because Orrak found a guy to love anyway.


End file.
